LA Ignored the Warnings

You could use the title for almost any story about reverses affecting Los Angeles’ economy, but this one happens to be about LAX.  According to LA Biz Observed blogger Mark Lacter, and the Daily Breeze, LAX is facing losses in its lucrative overseas business, business that has a largely unseen positive effect on the Los Angeles economy.  It’s so unseen that City Hall has utterly mismanaged the needed upgrades at LAX for the past 15 years, preferring to listen to NIMBY-minded voters than the economists, labor leaders and airline executives who kept telling them LAX’s huge advantage in international flights was not God-given, and that the airport needed some major fixes or the airlines would go elsewhere.

Sure, Air India’s decision to stop flying out of Los Angeles could be blamed on high fuel prices.  That alibi was already claimed by the Department of World Airports chief executive. But Air India still flies out of San Francisco, and fuel costs just as much up there.

The fact that you could reach dozens of cities overseas via nonstop flights from LAX gave this region an enormous edge economically.  But the locals didn’t care much about that and it was easy and more beneficial to make LAX and its stewards a target for political posturing.  And eventually, much easier for those stewards to tell the city council whatever nonsense it wants to hear.  It’s not their airport.  It’s Los Angeles’.

This is the problem with term limits.  The idea was to force the politicians to focus on their responsibilities as elected officials and not on their electoral fortunes.  This part of term limits has failed. The politicians are much less connected to the city they serve than they were in the days of John Ferraro and Gilbert Lindsey.  In Los Angeles, you now have a political culture built around tearing down city assets rather than protecting them, because having a few notches in your belt positions you for the next campaign.  So what if a critical institution like LAX is weakened?  That’s a trivial concern to the city’s political leadership now.

P.S. Bill Boyarsky has a post explaining what council members really think about when they think about LAX.

Those Selfless Angelinos of 1984

Give me a break!

This is from the LA Times’ series on traffic:

When Los Angeles traffic experts get depressed at the sorry state of the freeways, their minds sometimes drift to the improbable days of 1984, when the Olympic torch blazed through town and the city’s sea of cars parted.

For more than a week, downtown and Westside freeways worked as their creators had intended, whisking drivers from place to place.

The respite from congestion was flickeringly brief, but many still ask: Can the experiment be repeated?

For the 16-day event, transportation agencies put aside turf wars. Employees carpooled or worked staggered hours or took vacations. Truckers shifted deliveries to off-hours. Construction projects were rescheduled. Arterial lanes were reserved for buses. Two-way streets became one-way streets.

Actually?  Despite all the measures, the entire city was braced for the worst traffic in memory.  The staggered hours, shifted truck deliveries, etc. were implemented to keep the already crowded freeways from congealing into a gridlocked meltdown, among other things delaying athletes and media from reaching event venues.  It was assumed that the traffic would still be terrible.  It was a shock, a thrilling surprise, that traffic jams disappeared almost entirely.

But that’s not how young Times reporters and their sources remember it:

“We had essentially no congestion,” said David Roper, retired operations chief for the California Department of Transportation’s Los Angeles division. “What was behind all this was the feeling ‘I don’t want to be the guy who screws up the Olympics.’ “

You cannot be serious. This wasn’t altruism, it was fear!  So many people I knew left town entirely.  Everyone remembers that the 1984 Games made a profit.  What’s often forgotten is that it made a profit from a brilliant sponsorship campaign, and not from ticket sales.  Most Olympic events were not sold out.  Few wanted to brave the traffic.

The reporters’ point is, it only takes a small percentage of drivers to stay off the freeways for the commute to go smoothly for everyone else.  Today was proof.  I had to go downtown for the first time on a weekday since gas prices zoomed past $4 a gallon.  My route is basically the entire Harbor Freeway.  I didn’t go at the traditional peak, but even at 10 a.m., it’s usually blocked from somewhere north of the 105 through downtown.

Not today.  It was clear all the way, even through that crazy stretch where cars try pick their way to the correct lanes for the 5, 101, 110 and the exits.  And I’m sure it’s because of the gas prices. I hear anecdotally  that companies are shortening the work week, instituting telecommuting and making other arrangements to keep their employees from searching for work closer to home.

This is a big, fat, prize-bait series the Times is running.  Obviously, it was conceived before gasoline got so expensive.  The writers might not have expected it, but summer 2008 is going to be another Traffic Miracle, thanks to whatever you blame for high oil prices.  Maybe by the end of the week, they’ll have figured it out.

The “Silver Lining in High Gas Prices”: A Boost for Telecommuting

When I worked in Mayor Bradley’s office in the 1990s, I was part of a task force designed to increase city workers’ telecommuting.  At that time, oil was cheap, but traffic was horrible and air quality still (then as now) the worst in the nation.

We were mindful of the 1984 Olympics traffic experience, when just an 8 percent drop in the amount of cars on the road resulted in traffic that flowed like midnight.  Small changes can have a big impact on the traffic.  Less traffic idling was another anti-smog strategy.  So, we thought it should be possible for City Hall to set an example for the business community.

How silly.  When it comes to management, Los Angeles’ city government will never “lead the way” on anything.

Both management and labor perceived telecommuting as a threat.  Department heads didn’t want anyone out of their sightlines for any longer than was absolutely necessary.  They assumed the worst of their employees.  The unions demanded that telecommuting become a bargaining issue.  Typical of how city unions work, the labor appointee to our task force missed the first two meetings, then came late to the third and asked to speak with me privately.  She said, “We’re not sure if telecommuting is a way for managers to unfairly reward or unfairly punish our members, but either way, we’re going to oppose it.”  Then she sat at the table with the rest of the task force, repeating a few platitudes, knowing she’d killed the idea.

What emerged instead were 9/80 and 4/40 schemes to give some city employees the option of two to four weekdays off per month in return for a longer workday.  What it meant in practice was employees would work the same eight hours worth of tasks, stretched into nine- or ten-hour days, except with an extra day off every week or two.  It was nice for them, but chaotic when it was time to schedule meetings.  Most workers chose Friday to stay home, so Fridays went dead.  Add to that the introduction of casual Fridays — which started after I left the mayor’s office — and the end of each week became a world where Charles Bukowski would have fit right in:  Hardly anyone there, and those who did show up wearing sweats, old T-shirts and shoes you might use for wading into flooded basement.

I don’t know if that’s still the case over there; I haven’t been in City Hall for over four years.  But I digress.

In Southern California, every weekday there are tens of thousands of commuters who drive epic distances to get to work centers in LA and Orange counties.  In the 1990s, the Inland Empire land boom was just beginning.  My last commute was about 30 miles each way and that seemed painful and expensive enough.  Now gas prices have doubled since 2004, and many people are driving west from places like Temecula.   Temecula is almost 90 miles from downtown LA, and more than 65 miles from Santa Ana. Do the math.  If your car gets 20 miles per gallon, pretty good for a beep-n-creep voyage on crowded freeways, it’s costing you nine gallons per day to go back and forth from work = $36 per day just for gas.

I can’t imagine that at least some of those people, and the merciful among their bosses would want to alleviate that.  So, all of a sudden, telecommuting looks less scary, maybe necessary, and perhaps something that will be embraced in a rush.  That’s what Computerworld’s blogger Mike Elgan thinks:

One thing leads to another. High gas prices prompt employers (including the federal government) to allow employees to work from home once a week. Once that’s accepted culturally, an elephant appears in the boardroom: If it’s OK once a week, why isn’t it OK five times a week? (This is what happened with “casual Friday” — its once-a-week acceptance lead to the current trend of casual wear every day.) Once telecommuting is accepted, “extreme telecommuting” — working from the Bahamas or Paris or an internet-connected shack on the Australian Outback — becomes acceptable, too. After all, once you’re out of the office and connecting to the company over the Internet, it doesn’t really matter where you are, does it?

The last remaining barrier to the general acceptance of “extreme telecommuting” is purely cultural — it’s our irrational clinging to obsolete rules for how we work. As the cultural barriers fall, more of us will be freed to work from wherever we please, something which mobile technology and Internet communication already enables.

To me, that’s the silver lining in high gas prices.

Seth Godin, writing about the higher standards business meetings and conferences must meet to make it worth the (increasingly expensive) trip puts the onus on managers to make going to the office a value-added experience, or else:

If you’re a knowledge worker, your boss shouldn’t make you come to the (expensive) office every day unless there’s something there that makes it worth your trip. She needs to provide you with resources or interactions or energy you can’t find at home or at Starbucks. And if she does invite you in, don’t bother showing up if you’re just going to sit quietly.

I’ve worked in three companies that had lots of people and lots of cubes, and I spent the entire day walking around. I figured that was my job. The days where I sat down and did what looked like work were my least effective days. It’s hard for me to see why you’d bother having someone come all the way to an office just to sit in a cube and type.

The new rule seems to be that if you’re going to spend the time and the money to see someone face to face, be in their face. Interact or stay home!

How long before companies in Los Angeles, where the distance of commutes is among the most acute in the nation, adopt this kind of thinking?  I’m not sure they have a choice.

There’s probably money to be made in telling managers how to manage a virtual workforce, because a lot of companies will need to make this shift soon or they’ll lose valuable employees.

(A different version of this post appears on the blog I write for Dolan Media, From 50,000 Feet.)

“End of Summer”

My wife stopped me in my tracks this morning when she read me the following poem, which is in the current New Yorker:

End of Summer
by James Richardson

Just an uncommon lull in the traffic

so you hear some guy in an apron, sleeves rolled up,

with his brusque sweep brusque sweep of the sidewalk,

and the slap shut of a too thin rental van,

and I told him no a gust has snatched from a conversation

and brought to you, loud.

                                    It would be so different

if any of these were missing is the feeling

you always have on the first day of autumn,

no, the first day you think of autumn, when somehow

the sun singling out high windows,

a waiter settling a billow of white cloth

with glasses and silver, and the sparrows

shattering to nowhere are the Summer

waving that here is where it turns

and will no longer be walking with you,

traveller, who now leave all of this behind,

carrying only what it has made of you.

Already the crowds seem darker and more hurried

and the slang grows stranger and stranger,

and you do not understand what you love,

yet here, rounding a corner in mild sunset,

is the world again, wide-eyed as a child

holding up a toy even you can fix.

                                                 How light your step

down the narrowing avenue to the cross streets,

October, small November, barely legible December.

Sure enough, I went down to the beach late this afternoon, the same beach where only four days ago hung with the vapors of a moist, southern heat wave; and instead of the balminess I remembered, I saw clear, blue cloudless skies and felt a cool, almost chilly breeze.  Only the warmth of the water carried the reminder of the tropics that so recently drifted through here. 

It almost feels like the poem brought the change in the weather.  It certainly set the scene for the day.  

Why do I miss that icky, sticky heat wave?  Well, I really don’t.  It kept me awake and made it hard to concentrate on anything, especially work.   But the beach was amazing in a way it probably won’t be again for a long time.  I wish I’d thought to spend more time there.

“Palomar” to Premiere in Temecula

My friends Todd and Robin Mason have completed their epic scientific history documentary, “The Journey to Palomar,” and its first public screening will take place next week at the Temecula Valley International Film & Music Festival. It will be shown twice: September 13 at 8 p.m. and September 15 at 3:30 p.m.

The Palomar Observatory’s Hale Telescope, at one time the most powerful telescope on earth, was first used by Edwin Hubble and played a crucial role in gathering evidence to support Einstein’s theories and the idea of the Big Bang as the origin of the universe. Despite its age, it is far from outmoded and keeps a busy schedule to this day.

Palomar is also a San Diego County landmark, so this screening is being treated as news by the local media. From the North County Times:

The film follows the career of George Ellery Hale —- considered the “Father of Astrophysics” —- as he wages a lifelong struggle to build the giant telescope that would turn the way humanity views the heavens on its head.

The film also tells the story of the creation of “The Giant Eye” —- the telescope’s 200-inch-diameter mirror —- and how it captured the imagination of Depression-weary America.

Considered the “moon shot of the 1930s and ’40s,” the American public hung on every word printed and every radio broadcast about Hale’s project from the time the government grant was given to begin construction until the giant mirror arrived in Escondido in 1947 and began its journey up the mountain.

(snip)

The husband and wife team of Todd and Robin Mason have had a video production company in Los Angeles for more than two decades. In that time, they’ve found success —- “we’re making a living,” Todd Mason said with a laugh —- working on commercial and promotional pieces for companies such as Nissan and Bank of America.

“We decided a few years ago we wanted to do something that we wanted to do,” Todd Mason said. “I’ve always been interested in astronomy and a friend told us the story of how the Palomar Observatory came to be and it seemed really interesting.”

Labor Day Weekend Total: One Lost Pair of Glasses

Very hot weekend in Southern California. The thermometers underestimated what was going on, particularly out here on the coast. It wasn’t 114 degrees, but it certainly got higher than 88.  The  stickiness factor made sleep difficult.  Accomplishing a simple chore often required a change of shirt afterward.

The people around me all seemed sleepy and uncommonly gentle, looking to avoid confrontations if possible because arguing would take too much energy. This was not weather to provoke a riot. This was the kind of weather that makes you forget things.

My brother and his family were down from the Bay Area for the weekend. We made a point of going to the beach just before sunset on both Saturday and Sunday evenings, when the crowds were smaller and the temperatures more comfortable.

Sunday we were particularly late in going. It was just my visiting brother and me. We got into the water as the sun was disappearing over the horizon, and body-surfed until the late-staying lifeguard finally whistled us out.

I was juggling car keys, a cell phone, a shirt, a towel and glasses. Somehow in the approaching dark, I lost track of my glasses, a fact I didn’t realize til we had pulled out of the parking lot. I did a U-turn. “I know exactly where they must be,” I assured my brother.

Flashlight in hand, we hiked back down to the beach — Rat Beach butts up against the cliffs of Palos Verdes, and is accessed by a steep asphalt road and then a trail. We searched. I was shocked I didn’t find the glasses right away. In a flashlight’s beam, it was not easy to get reoriented. We spent an hour systematically walking up and down the beach but they didn’t turn up.

Here’s What “John From Cincinnati” Means

I get it.  The fact that I get it doesn’t make “John From Cincinnati” a good show, but if you’re wondering what it’s all about, it’s simple.

“John From Cincinnati” tried to answer the question of what would happen if the most potent figures from the New Testament, akin to John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Joseph and Mary and of course, Jesus Christ, were to emerge in a contemporary setting.  What would the people around them do? 

The show asks:  Do you believe the New Testament?  Do you take it as a matter of not just faith but fact that Jesus performed miracles like raising the dead and walking on water?  Was the purpose of these miraculous feats to persuade the people of his times to believe he was divine, and that his words were prophecies? 

If you do believe these things, why would you find “John From Cincinnati” implausible? Isn’t there supposed to be a return?  Well, then, it could happen like it does on the show, couldn’t it?

The show was rife with Christian mystical symbolism, but I don’t think the point of the show was to bring us all to Jesus.  It was, instead, a what-if, a fantasy, a film noir Second Coming. And yet, within the universe of the show, we are to believe that this particular Second Coming is a very good thing — for the characters in the show, and for humanity in general.  The crisis precipitated by 9/11 is “huge,” as John says.  Bigger than what we believe it to be already.  An existential threat that will require divine force to save us mere, frail humans from turning it into an apocalypse.

Bring on the Clicks; I’m Blogging About “John From Cincinnati”

I wrote a nothing post about “The Sopranos” last year and forgot about it. But the word “spoilers” was in the title, and even though I made it clear I didn’t have any spoilers, and didn’t want any spoilers, it got thousands of clicks when the series ran its final nine episodes this spring. Well, I like “The Sopranos” a lot, I’m with those who think it’s the best television series in history, so I kept writing about it, and kept getting bunches of hits. Who knows how far anyone read into my musings — the mania was for spoilers. But it drew a crowd.

Will history repeat itself when I write about “John from Cincinnati,” HBO’s “Sopranos” successor?

Seemingly, no. “John From Cincinnati,” or JFC as its rabid fans would call it if the show had any rabid fans, is the weirdest, most off-putting show I’ve ever seen on television. And yet, I’ve stuck by it to the end, which comes — ah, relief — this Sunday night. I can’t imagine HBO picking up this show for another season, so if the writers have any explanation for themselves, it will probably have to come Sunday.

What do I hate about this show? Rebecca de Mornay’s character spends most of every show screaming and cursing in a voice that reminds you of worn-out brakes. “John,” the mystical idiot savant who doesn’t mind being stabbed because it heals right away, stands like he always needs to pee — which is ironic, since the first clue that John isn’t normal is that he never “dumps out” — alleged surfer talk for making #2.

The remaining characters all play like out-of-place refugees from “NYPD Blue,” show co-creator David Milch’s fondly remembered cop drama. They talk in that kind of ornate, faux-Damon Runyon style that is Milch’s trademark, but where it worked on “NYPD Blue” and “Deadwood,” it seems completely wrong here. I haven’t read the novels of the other co-creator, Kem Nunn, but he has a lot of credibility as a chronicler of surfer culture, and the show’s surf atmospherics seem right. But there’s not enough footage in the water!

The opening credits are the best part of the show, but they are a tease.

The song is “Johnny Appleseed” by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, from the album Global A-Go-Go. I am grateful to “John From Cincinnati” for introducing me to the song by the late co-leader of the Clash. But all those great vintage surfing shots? Why can’t we have more of those?

The show’s HBO website does have one valuable feature, the “Inside the Episode” essays by writer Steven Hawk. They’re weird, but compelling. They go so far “inside” the episode, you hardly recognize it. Regarding last week’s show, he said this:

I was enthralled during the shooting of the scene in the Snug Harbor parking lot when Ramon (Luis Guzman) shows Barry and Doctor Smith (Garret Dillahunt) the Avon catalog he received from Rosa the friendly rose-growing neighbor. Ramon, as excited as we’ve ever seen him, urges his two friends to turn to the catalog’s middle spread, which is sprinkled with the mysterious stick-man figure that’s been increasingly prominent in recent episodes. As Smith dashes off to get his own catalog, Ramon nearly pleads with Barry:

RAMON: Listen to me! Look at this!

BARRY: I am looking, I am seeing Avon in an entirely new light…

RAMON: This is big. This is huge.

BARRY: I think it very well could be.

RAMON: I want to cook something.

BARRY: I could eat.

Doctor Smith arrives, shows his catalog to Ramon and Barry.

SMITH: Look.

BARRY: Those same marvelous figures.

SMITH (to Ramon): What did she tell you about these?

RAMON: Nothing.

SMITH: This is huge.

“Big” and “huge,” of course, are words John said repeatedly during his strange, hypnotic parking lot speech at the end of Episode Six. And don’t forget that Ramon cooked for everyone during that speech. But my favorite aspect of this scene is the threesome’s inexplicable sense of joy and purpose. Here’s what Milch told the actors during rehearsal: “What’s happening is, all these subliminal cues are being activated without your knowing it. Essentially what you’re doing is activating neural connections. They know [the appearance of the stick figures in the catalog] is huge simply because they’ve trusted their intuitions. A wave of purposefulness is carrying all of you, even while you’re thinking, ‘I don’t know what’s happening here…’”

In other words, you need not know exactly what’s going on to be moved by the universe.

Good to know!

If the show works at all, it probably does work on the subliminal level Milch was suggesting. Why are these people happy? Why are these people mad? Why don’t these people notice how cracked everyone else around them is, and run away?

Maybe after Sunday night, the dozens of odd mysteries about which I’m not all that curious will be resolved. Or maybe they won’t, but my “neural connections” will be clicking away, causing an unaccountable improvement to my life. There must be some point to this show.

A Sticky Week for Writing

Tempers are flaring everywhere I go, and even a simple non-athletic feat like washing the dishes or walking the dog can get me sweating enough to where I have to throw my clothes into the ever-growing pile in the laundry hamper.

Everywhere around me, people are on vacation. It’s not like living in Martha’s Vineyard, but Southern California is one of those places where working people coexist with people who are off the clock, temporarily or permanently. Since I work from home most of the time, and live not too far from the beach, it’s more pronounced. Take my dog for a walk at, say 11 a.m., and there’s a guy about my age all dolled up in colorful spandex sitting on a bike. Vacation? Early retirement? He couldn’t be unemployed. Nobody’s unemployed these days, supposedly, except by choice.

But I also have friends and family who are off and want to do things. When I was unemployed — or as I like to call it, “exiled” — I partly justified my existence by becoming the unofficial recreational planner for stressed-out friends and relatives. It almost seemed like I could take it up as a full-time gig: “C’mon. Relax. Go to the beach.” “You think I should?” “Hey, look where being a workaholic got me!”

Anyway…it’s one of those sticky summers we get occasionally. Hot sometimes, humid always. Today in the South Bay, the temperature is 73 degrees, but the humidity is 66 percent. Over in St. Louis, center of a big heat wave, it’s 97 degrees, but only 38 percent humidity. Up in Boston, it’s 76, but with 80 percent humidity. Awful, but we’re not much better. We Southern Californians typically don’t complain about weather, though. That would look ungrateful.

Could this be a signal of global climate change? Could be, but if so, the pattern began more than 20 years ago. I remember a summer in the mid-1980s as the first sticky one in memory, when whipped cream puffs of clouds hung over the region, the coastal waters were hot and subject to algae blooms. It seemed very weird, even ominous. We still talked about nuclear war back then, and for some reason that summer felt like the final days before apocalypse. Unlike this summer, I remember that one never gave us an afternoon breeze. The waves didn’t crash on the shore — they shuffled their feet and fell to their knees.

Now I get it. The weather has changed in some way. We get dealt a humid summer out here once every four or five years, and 2007 we got stuck with one.

Anyway, so I’ve not been writing here much because it’s so sticky that my mind is stuck, and because so many people around me are either on vacation, in a bad mood or both…but I’ve got a few things in the works. So stay tuned. Or come back after your vacation.

Breezin’ Along with the Breeze

I have been trying to keep in mind Tony Soprano’s sixth-season admonition, “‘Remember When’ is the lowest form of conversation.”

I’m in my fifties now, I’ve seen a lot of things here in my little world, and I find history both pleasurable and important. But I also think change is good, new things excite me and as a father of an incoming high-school senior, the future is far more important to me now than the past. For me, too. It has to be. What I once thought of as my life has ended abruptly, twice, with no turning back. This is a condition of everyone’s existence. Sometimes this truth is hidden, but it’s there.

I remember floating on a water taxi in Venice early one foggy morning, seeing these ornate palaces emerge from the opaque dampness, one-by-one like a procession of ghosts. Whoever built these gilded homes never imagined that mighty Venice would ever lose its grip on the world of commerce. But it did. When the end came — in the form of Napoleon’s armies — Venice didn’t even put up a fight. They wanted to save the palaces to remind them and future generations of how rich and powerful and glorious they were, once. So, in exchange for no bombardment, Venetians handed over the keys to the invader. And now the whole place is sinking.

Someday they’ll say of Venice: “Remember when?”

Curiously, I thought of all that when I came across LA Observed’s link to a post on Life on the Edge, a San Pedro blog. The post is about the Daily Breeze, the supposed newspaper of record for my part of Los Angeles, the South Bay and Harbor areas. When longtime owner Copley News sold it to Dean Singleton’s Los Angeles Newspaper Group a year or two ago, it was inevitable that we would read about the Breeze’s descent into the lower depths of journalism. LANG’s a cheapo-cheopo organization, proudly so. They buy up newspapers in a region, they consolidate as much of the operation as they can, and then they cut cut cut.

All Grim Fascination, All the Time

In my days as a commuter, particularly the last few years, I usually spent most of my trips up and down the Harbor Freeway on dreadful phone calls that were about as much fun as passing a kidney stone.  But there were days when I didn’t need to do that, and I could listen to the radio, or to one of the six CDs loaded in the player in my trunk. 

If anyone wanted to find out how I was really feeling, deep down inside, they could have asked me, “What did you listen to?”  If I said music, that was a sign I was in good spirits.  If I said “talk radio,” that probably meant I was in the throes of depression.

I was reminded of those grim days by LA Observed’s report that “Jamie, Jack and Stench,” a morning show on Star 98.7, is cancelled.  I occasionally listened to Jamie White, “Stench” (worst nickname ever), and former child actor Danny Bonaduce when that was the lineup.  With various co-hosts, Jamie White has been on Star 98’s morning drive shift for nine years, according to the LA Times. 

If I was listening to a political talk host like Laura Ingraham, Al Franken or Hugh Hewitt, that was an indication of a mild, manageable melancholia. Howard Stern?  Creeping despair and angst.  But if I was listening to Jamie White and co. or Tom Leykis, that was a sign I’d gone clinical and should be on suicide watch.  

Why did they bother me so much?  If you don’t know the programs, they’re both phone-in talk shows in which the hosts and their callers tell us as much as they can get away with about their sex lives.  Not just intercourse, but the whole process of meeting people of the opposite sex, dating, sleeping together, becoming dissatisfied with the sex, cheating on them and rationalizing it, finding out they’re cheating on you and not putting up with their rationalizations, breaking up with them, posting embarassing information about them along with nude pictures on the Internet, getting a restraining order… you know, modern romance. 

Of all the words used on these shows, the most common was probably “bitch.” The sex they talked about is anything but ecstatic. It’s more of an exchange of value, in which both sides are looking for the edge. The highest praise is bestowed upon men who cadge sex out of a woman without spending any money courting her; and on women who manage to do the reverse–find a man with a lot of money and make him burn through a lot of it before yielding to his sexual demands. 

In the world of Leykis and White, the opposite sex is always the adversary, never to be trusted.  Falling in love is equated to being a complete idiot, especially if one falls in love with a partner who is of the wrong economic status, or who is less attractive than one’s personal attributes are worth on the open market. But that’s another part of the contest.  Boys, you’re supposed to make attractive women think you’ve got more money than you do.  Girls, if nature didn’t give you the physical features required to catch a wealthy man, then it’s off to the plastic surgeon for a makeover.

Both shows thought they were funny.  There was a lot of guffawing when a caller would talk about a succesful con job they’d pulled off, or a nasty breakup that left the ex-partner completely humiliated.  But all I could pick up from these programs was a lot of anger.  Here we are, the most fortunate people on the planet, living in the free-est and wealthiest country, many of us in the beautiful Mediterranean climate of Southern California, and all anyone thinks about is how dissatisfied they are with their sexual status.  These people don’t even sound horny to me.  They only want the kind of sex that validates their self-image–with people that make others envious.

The callers to these shows are all 20- and 30-somethings, and at the time I was a mid- to late-40-something, happily married and with lots of fond memories of my wilder years. I can’t recall ever evaluating a woman the way they do on such shows, nor can I recall being evaluated that way.  Anyone I connected with romantically or sexually, it had to do with something undefinable, not a checklist.  The whole point was to feel good. It was private. And while break-ups are inevitable when you’re young, they were rarely something to celebrate. 

The popularity of shows like Leykis’ and Jamie White’s suggested that, somehow, without me noticing, the world had turned a lot harsher, and happiness became more elusive for the generations coming up after mine.  I listened to those shows when I was trapped in a different misery of my own, so I guess I was looking for something that reflected it — even though it made me more depressed and worried for the children in my life.

Star-98 says White was dropped because “management decided that the show is not a long-term fit with the music-intensive, artist-driven direction that began last April….”  Those words sound reassuring to me.  I’m not familiar with too many of the ”artists” the station’s website talks about, but the change might mean they found out their listeners wanted to be inspired by something special in the mornings, rather than be dragged down into the muck of dysfunction, resentment and envy that Leykis and White celebrate. 

Cycling in the Shallows

John Balzar is leaving the LA Times soon to go to work for the Humane Society in a PR position.  Balzar’s departure is sad on many levels; he was one of the Times’ best and most passionate writers, a last link to the Otis Chandler years.  His story today on Monica Howe, outreach coordinator for the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, could well be the last byline he has in the newspaper.

So I was frustrated after reading it to see that Balzar, of all people, wrote it.  I wanted to rip it to shreds as yet another example of the Times’ shallow reporting, and of the missed opportunity to expose its readers to the many fascinating and disruptive dimensions of the urban bicycling movement.   But, as is my usual habit, I read the byline last. 

“Aw nuts,” I said to myself.  “I really respect Balzar.”  I started making excuses for him.  Maybe it’s his editors’ fault.  Maybe the problem is the unimaginative approach of the Times’ website overseers.  And hey, it’s not the like story is bad, exactly.  It’s well-written and…  uh…

Okay, read Balzar’s story.  Do you see the words “Critical Mass” in there anywhere?  No?  In 1992, there was a massive traffic disruption in San Francisco, in which bicyclists dramatized their demands by clogging automotive traffic at rush hour.  It was called Critical Mass–a “visionary traffic jam.”  Critical Mass is now the name given to a monthly mass bike ride in major cities, in which bicycle and other self-propelled commuters take part.  According to the Critical Mass site dedicated to listing such events, Los Angeles, Long Beach and Newport Beach are among the cities that participate regularly.  It says here that the Los Angeles Critical Mass ride used to start at Sunset and Silver Lake, but recently moved to Wilshire and Western. It’s a local phenomenon as well as a global one. 

If you’re interested in what Critical Mass is all about, you can start with Wikipedia’s entry on the topic — a great read.  Critical Mass is many things: An environmental protest, a demand that cities do a better job of accomodating cyclists and ensuring their safety on public roadways, a celebration, an “organized coincidence” that demonstrates the viability of xerocracy – a benign form of anarchy, in which no one is in charge, but a mass event happens anyway.  Did you know that the Critical Mass phenomenon has led to a Rand Institute study of netwars? 

It’s possible, of course, that Monica Howe knows nothing about Critical Mass — unlikely, but possible.  But she certainly knows her own organization, and the specific public policy demands it has made.  Balzar describes Howe’s political positions this way:

She has thrown herself into the campaign to demand the stenciling of “sharrows” on city streets. A sharrow is a bicycle symbol with two chevrons that is meant to remind motorists to share the road and also to promote better lane positioning for those on bikes. Howe has rallied cyclists to demand safer streets. She has led efforts to support cyclists hit by cars. She has promoted group rides that bring residents in touch with unfamiliar neighborhoods. She hammers away on the idea that bicycles are the only zero-emission transit machines.

But his focus seems to be mostly on Howe’s personality.  This is a personality profile, after all.  But how many stories does the Times run on the issues facing bicyclists in Los Angeles?  If not in this story, when is the Times going to tell its readers what the Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition is advocating?  Here is a flyer from CICLE (Cyclists Inciting Change through Live Exchange) that Howe’s coalition wants to distribute to motorists:

(I hope this is readable. It’s downloadable at the link above.) 

The most important thing to take away from this flyer is that bicycle activists believe bicyclists should be entitled to as much space on the road as a car.  They don’t use the sidewalk, and they shouldn’t be limited to the parking lane — those places are often too dangerous.  People in parked cars are wont to open their doors suddenly, placing a deadly obstacle in the path of a fast-moving bicyclist.  Also, sometimes bicyclists need to make left turns.  They are not breaking the law if they cut in front of you to do this.  They have a right to do this.

The organization is also joining a postcard-writing campaign aimed at Mayor Villaraigosa:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa speaks about his efforts to make Los Angeles “the greenest and cleanest city in America”, yet his vision for a sustainable Los Angeles continues to neglect an emphasis on walking and bicycling as being part of this future.

Cities such as Portland, OR and San Francisco have quickly risen to the top of the list as the nation’s most sustainable cities. These cities have made significant efforts to encourage both bicycling and walking as clean and viable modes of transportation. C.I.C.L.E. believes that if Los Angeles is to become the “greenest and cleanest” city in the nation, then we too need to be incorporating strategies that encourage bicycling and walking as part of a sustainable solution for our transportation needs.

That’s news, isn’t it?  Not as sexy as the mayor’s battle over LAUSD, I grant, but if the Times is going to write a story about one of the city’s most influential bicyclist advocates, shouldn’t her involvement in a political protest of the mayor’s policies rate a mention?  Doesn’t it stand to reason that there ought to be — at least — a link to some of this information on the web? 

Believe me, I’m no expert on bicycling or bicycle activists.  I found all this information in about 10 minutes.  There is undoubtedly much, much more. The Web is one place where bicycle activists talk to each other–globally.

Bicyclist activism is a rich topic with massive implications for growth, the environment, transportation in Los Angeles — way more interesting stuff than anything SCAG has to say on those topics.  It is also a harbinger of the new forms that political activism will take, as the Harold Meyerson-approved model of deep-thinking, self-congratulatory conferences gives way to a new form of networking that, as you read further into it, could alter the balance of power in a dimension that conventional politics can’t access.

As far as it goes, John Balzar gives Monica Howe a nice profile.  I can just imagine the Westsiders who form the Times’ core readership reading it and nodding their heads approvingly.  Bicycles are just…so…wonderful!  Like puppies and rainbows. That’s just great that somebody is so passionate about it.  These readers might have had a different reaction if they understood the radicalism inherent in bicycle activism.

Christmas Night, 2006

A  belated Christmas card from Southern California to the world.  Taken Christmas night off Paseo Del Mar.  

What the #$*! Does SCAG Know!?*

When the Southern California Association of Governments puts out its annual State of the Region report, it’s usually a one-day story in the L.A.-area local media, and no story at all in Sacramento or Washington, D.C., where one could argue SCAG’s findings are really aimed — at the custodians of the mythical treasure chests where money to build all the roads, commuter rail lines, housing and schools we need is supposed to come from.  

SCAG’s report would get even less attention if it weren’t for the easy PR hook of a “report card.”  The report card itself is unpleasant reading, as the headlines reflect: “Quality of Life is Dim.” “State of Region Report is Bleak.” “Traffic Negatively Affects Life in SoCal…Duh.” The LA Times didn’t bother with it, instead choosing to focus on how the Inland Empire used to be affordable, but not so much anymore.  

The percentage of households able to afford a median-priced home in Riverside and San Bernardino counties dropped from 48% in 2001 to 18% last year, as the median price for an Inland Empire home increased from $157,000 to $374,000 during the same period, the study found.

Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge is also a SCAG board member and was in charge of this report.  As he assesses the explosive growth in his area, he makes the point that has always annoyed me about SCAG:

Loveridge compared his region’s growth to the boom that hit Orange County and the San Fernando Valley years ago. “You try to learn lessons,” he said, “but there are clearly market forces and social forces that help shape what takes place.”

New residents are moving to Riverside and San Bernardino counties from elsewhere in the United States, the study showed, bucking a larger regional migration trend.

Last year, 24,000 more people left Southern California to live and work in other parts of the United States than moved here, according to SCAG statistics.

Regional officials suggested that that turnaround could reflect Southern California’s cost of living, including high housing prices. The region last year registered a near-record-low mark in housing affordability, the report found. Still, it has not dampened the region’s housing construction boom.

In other words, nothing SCAG does or says matters.  If you’ve been around public affairs in LA long enough, you know that by now, SCAG could phone in these reports from a shack in Wyoming.  The numbers they crunch and package for public consumption are meant to spur action to change the region’s negative trends, but they can’t even stop history from repeating itself. Against “market forces and social forces,” SCAG and the region-wide consensus of elected officials who all endorse its agenda are impotent.  

The clue to SCAG’s weakness?  The report card, with all its C’s and D’s and F’s, is a policy-wonk view that doesn’t fit with what real people think.   According to SCAG’s own survey, more than half of Southern Californians think things are going “very well” or “somewhat well,” while less than 10 percent think things are going very badly.  Only about 20 percent of Southern Californians think transportation is the region’s top problem — and the survey shows there is no consensus about what the top problem really is. Crime, environment, economic concerns, education and immigration are each named by about 10-15 percent of the region’s residents as the top problem. 

SCAG, which is chartered as a regional planning entity, claims authority “to promote economic growth, personal well-being, and livable communities for all Southern Californians,” but has few tools with which to fulfill this grandiose promise.  This is why the agency is so relentless in telling us that traffic, the environment and affordable housing are bad and getting worse.  Its leaders perpetually wait for a call from the people of Southern California to come to their rescue.  

We’ve got myriad problems in Southern California, but the ones SCAG focuses on aren’t especially unique.  The environment is now perceived as a global issue.  Where you stand on housing affordability depends on whether you are currently an owner or a renter.  Most Southern California owners have an investment that appreciates faster than most other ventures. 

Traffic congestion is part of living in an urban area; it improves only when the economy weakens, and no one wants that.  People in Southern California figure that part of living and working includes traffic jams, crowded buses and trains, parking hassles, etc.  They don’t think it’s much different in other cities, where you can also get stuck in traffic — and freeze your butt off in December.  They don’t think anyone has the answers to problems like this — least of all an obscure public agency that seems obsessed with telling them what they already know. 

*Edited, 12/17

A December Night in Redondo Beach

My son, my dog and I wanted to take a walk on the Esplanade in Redondo Beach on Sunday afternoon, but I had chores to do first.  But I stubbornly persisted with the idea, despite a little rain and approaching darkness.   Here’s a southerly view: 

Here was a heartfelt plea, taped carefully to a lamppost.  I hope the gnarly dude in question gives it up.

Dropping Standards

My radio hero, Saul Levine, has disappointed me with his decision to switch Los Angeles’ KKGO-AM from the “standards” format to country.  Apparently, the median age of people who listen to Sinatra & co. is too old.

“I began to get dozens if not hundreds of telephone calls from country fans saying, ‘You’re the last one who can save it,’ ” says Saul Levine, president and general manager of Mt. Wilson FM Broadcasters, which owns XSUR and KKGO. “This kept going on and I thought, ‘These were really nice people.’ “

These also were more desirable people — at least to advertisers — than KKGO was attracting with the “standards” format the station had for the last two years.

“I love the standards format,” Levine says. “But it was difficult to sell. The median age of listeners is 65-plus, and when an ad agency hears that, there’s no buy there. The outer fringes of what they’re looking for is 54.”

The median age of the 650,000 people who made up the steady KZLA audience, however, per Arbitron research, was in the early 40s.

“As much as I love the standards format, I’m not in position to continue after two years of losing money,” Levine says. “And here are people begging me to put a format on that isn’t currently in the market.”

I’m a little surprised at the demographics driving Levine’s problem with advertisers.  Isn’t “the great American songbook” going through a bit of a revival?  Meanwhile — contemporary country music seems completely disposable, but that’s just me.  I’ll always have time for Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Ray Price, but acts like Shania Twain, Brooks and Dunn, Tim McGraw and the rest would put me right to sleep if they weren’t so annoying.

Oh well.  I still love Saul for K-Mozart and for saving KLON, the non-commercial jazz station at Cal State Long Beach.  If a bunch of oafs in cowboy hats can spruce up his cash flow to keep those other stations going strong — yee-hah!

Los Angeles County Lite?

Probably I’m one of only about 238 people who think this is a big deal, but trust me, it’s a big deal! From Rick Orlov’s Daily News column today:

Prodded by City Councilwoman Jan Perry, a review has been quietly started to look at what it would take to have the city become its own county — similar to San Francisco — in an effort to get more federal and state funding.

Perry said she asked for a preliminary review by the Chief Legislative Analyst s Office because of the homelessness situation and the belief that Los Angeles County may dole out money to address the crisis based on politics rather than need.

It will take months before anything really surfaces, and it would be a complicated breakup. Remember how long it took to get the San Fernando Valley secession process vetted and on the ballot?

The difference is, the special interests who would favor a breakup probably have equal or greater ability to make this happen than the San Fernando Valley interests did.   Combined with Mayor Villaraigosa’s successful effort to obtain partial control of the previously independent LA Unified School District, this has the looks of a trend — the City of Los Angeles wanting to be accountable for all major governmental services within its boundaries. 

Who does what is a major source of confusion for many LA residents.  Right now, the City of LA is responsible for: law enforcement, firefighting, sanitation (trash from single-family homes and all sewage), libraries, street maintenance, street lighting, animal regulation, zoning, some parks, regulating cable TV and pipelines, and other less-visible services.  In addition, the city owns a public utility that sells water and electricity, and a port and several airports that very profitably lease space to shipping-related companies and airlines. 

The County is responsible for health services, welfare, children’s services, management of the criminal and civil courts and other criminal justice services like public defenders and probation, and flood control for the entire county, including all the cities.  It also provides law enforcement, firefighting; and other municipal services in the unincorporated areas, and, on a contract basis, to some cities.  For example, Beverly Hills has its own police department, but neighboring West Hollywood contracts with the County Sheriffs.   The county also has control over a number of cultural institutions: the Music Center, the Hollywood Bowl, LACMA.  The city has a cultural affairs department too, but its assets aren’t quite as notable.  Don’t even get me started on who does mosquito abatement.

Obviously, what’s at play here are the big-ticket items — health and welfare, both of which administer huge programs that receive huge allocations from the state and federal governments.  Undoubtedly the County would keep running the courts and continue to be responsible for dams and flood channels. I doubt the City Council wants to set up a new coroner’s office.  

This is not about decentralization.  It’s also not about “respect,” which was the driving force in the Valley secession movement.  A power struggle?  Yes.   But it’s also about the relationship between the government and the governed, and the mediating role of elected officials at the different levels.   There are only five county supervisors.  Their districts are bigger than most cities and some states.  They tend to be invisible.  There are not enough of them to go around, to cover the needs of 10 million people.  In the city, there are fifteen council members, which means the ratio of constituents to elected officials is somewhat smaller. 

One of the first things that will happen if the city effects this secession will be a reality check on the way the city governs itself.  The question of how much power the mayor should have relative to the council members, and how many council members there should be — all that will be reopened.  Which is fine.  Even without this expansion of its role, I believe the city needs more councilmembers.

Maybe this idea will die a quiet death.  But I don’t think so.  Accountability is an idea with the wind at its back.

Seasons in the Sun

In an altogether gimmicky and boring piece about director Tim Burton (a Halloween-themed piece on “frightening spots” in LA) in today’s Calendar, I came across the following passage that encapsulated for me so much of what is wrong with the LA Times:

So most of the stuff Burton loved in Los Angeles is gone, he says. (Not the first time we’ve heard that one.) Traffic has gotten a lot worse. (Check.) The lack of seasons seems kind of eerie. (Ditto.)

The “lack of seasons.” Oh, please. How long has the writer of this tripe lived in Southern California? Of course we have seasons. Southern California has more seasons than most places I’ve been. Each month has a particular quality to it. We don’t just have four seasons — there are at least eight. And that’s assuming you stay in one part of Southern California all the time. If you travel from the desert to the sea, going through the mountains and the valleys, you’ve got four distinct weather-regions, each one of them with huge seasonal variations.

The oceans bring fog to the coast in Spring and Summer, fog that sometimes rolls deep into the interior. The deserts bring Santa Ana winds that clear every particle of dust and moisture from the air. Rain and, at higher elevations, snow can be heavy at times, or just a light mist. Tropical storms bring warm breezes. Arctic storms bring fierce blasts of cold air. Some summer days are languid, humid, the sky painted with boiling clouds. Others are hot, dry, the sun penetrating and hazardous. I was sitting on the beach one evening last July. The wind was blowing onshore in a bizarre rhythm: Ten minutes of warm air, ten minutes of chilled air, like the thermostat was broken.

You live here long enough, you can tell what month it is just by looking at the sky. From where I’m writing right now, there is no doubt it’s October — even though October is probably the most unpredictable month of the year. Today is a hot, dry October day — as the horrific fires near Palm Springs attest. But some of the biggest storms I’ve ever seen came through in October. Yesterday, it looked like it was about to rain.

The LA Times apparently thinks we’re all from somewhere back east. Or that we take our weather cues from drugstore calendars or advertising that depicts the four dictionary-defined seasons: snowy winter, budding spring, hot summer, colorful autumn. These are not the seasons most people in the world experience. They are the seasons of Northern Europe and the Northern half of North America. The cradles of early civilization were all, like Southern California, closer to the equator, and that’s still where most of the world’s people live.

Look at this map:

Los Angeles’ position on the globe is roughly the same latitude as Beijing and Tokyo, just a little south of Teheran, a little north of Casablanca, a little north of Islamabad, the northernmost city in India. Sleigh-bells do not ring and the maple leaves don’t take on a golden glow, for most of the world’s population, Angelenos among them.

To be sure, humans have taken advantage of the receding glaciers to colonize regions closer to the poles, at least for now; but to assert that the weather patterns of, say, Denmark are the norm and what we experience here in LA is anomalous, even creepy, is a kind of bizarre Northeastern U.S.-centrism that the Southwest’s biggest newspaper should be able to avoid. We really aren’t all involuntary refugees from our old stomping grounds in New York or Boston; not anymore.

Political Football Fumbled

I love it. For more than a decade, the members of the LA Memorial Coliseum Commission have deployed their combined political muscle to kill off proposals to build a new stadium for a National Football League team to replace the Rams and Raiders. In the face of league resistance, the local leadership has insisted that when the NFL returns to Los Angeles, it will be at a refurbished Coliseum. Now that the NFL has finally given the signal that its final answer is “no,” the Coliseum’s leadership is acting like they’re the ones rejecting the league, not the other way around.

Coliseum Commissioner David Israel told Times’ columnist T.J. Simers:

“L.A. is surviving quite nicely without the NFL and the NFL is surviving quite nicely without L.A.,” Israel said. “I guess the divorce is final.”

Well, uh, yeah, except it’s the Coliseum’s dog-in-the-manger political strategy that has kept the league out since the league let two teams leave after the the ‘94 season. The NFL would have been thrilled to occupy a football stadium in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, with the participation of then-Dodger owner Peter O’Malley. Mayor Riordan asked O’Malley to draw up a plan (which cost him a million dollars), then a year later, at the behest of the Coliseum Commission, instructed O’Malley to bury that plan.
To break the logjam, Anschutz Entertainment Group’s Tim Liewecke and LA Avengers’ owner Casey Wasserman developed a privately-financed downtown stadium proposal, introducing it complete with renderings, at a civic breakfast, introduced by Mayor Hahn — and within 48 hours (or was it 24?), they meekly dropped the idea, with Liewecke saying they “didn’t want to go through an ugly political process.” Translation: They didn’t want to take on the Coliseum’s die-hard backers.

For most of the past 12 years, NFL officials expressed a complete lack of interest in returning to the Coliseum in any form. “Trying to put a new dress on an old hooker is not the way I want to go dancing,” was how then-Baltimore Ravens owner described the city’s ideas for renovating the Coliseum. Less colorfully, NFL spokesman Joe Browne said, “We have yet to see a viable stadium plan for an NFL team at the Coliseum.” The local leadership’s insistence on the Coliseum or bust is generally cited as one major reason the last NFL expansion team went to Houston in 1999 instead of Los Angeles.

It looks like the dance is over; the Coliseum and the city are standing near the punchbowl, acting as if all along, it was the NFL wooing them, and now, the Belle of the Ball has decided to go home alone. From today’s LA Times story on the Coliseum’s talks with USC on a new lease:

Word of the (USC) negotiations came a day after the NFL said the cost of a new or renovated stadium in the Los Angeles area could top $1 billion, more than double the estimate of a few years ago. At their annual fall meeting Tuesday, several team owners said a return to the region was not a top priority.
That prompted frustration and exasperation from some influential members of the Coliseum Commission, who earlier this month said they might investigate non-NFL alternatives if no significant progress was made at the league meetings.

They “might investigate non-NFL alternatives?” I think the NFL has been telling them to investigate non-NFL alternatives for 12 years!

“I think they regressed,” said David Israel, a state appointee to the commission. “I basically think the deal is done. It isn’t going to be made.”

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who also serves on the commission, said it became apparent over time that if the NFL really wanted to make a deal with the Coliseum, the league would have made one already. He, too, said it’s time for stadium officials to move on.”When you ask a girl out 25 times and she says no 25 times, maybe the 26th time you just don’t call,” he said.

As a football fan, I guess I really don’t mind. I look at it this way: Los Angeles has now become the biggest college football market in the country. Interest in USC has never been higher, and UCLA has a huge, loyal fan base. Neither of these teams are about to move to St. Louis because their owner can cash in. Both teams are part of the exciting Pac-10, which brings teams like Cal, Oregon, Stanford, Arizona State, etc. into the city each year — not to mention the frequent appearances of other top college teams. If you really want to see a Trojan or a Bruin game, it’s not outasite expensive like an NFL ticket would be. After 12 years without the NFL, some expansion franchise or a lame NFL team that really belongs to another city would have a hard time winning any fan’s hearts.

Sure, this city is full of NFL fans. They follow the Rams, the Raiders, the Chargers, or whatever team a former USC star is playing with now.  Lately, I’m seeing New Orleans Saints and Arizona Cardinal hats and jerseys popping up–in honor of Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart.

But the political side of this fiasco has been cost-free for too long. This region’s leadership failed to accomplish what should have been easy — to bring a team from the most TV-dependent sports league into the nation’s #2 TV market. They let politics gum it up. If this were any other kind of business but politics, heads would be rolling.

It Won’t Be Jane Harman? (Updated)*

Until the post-2000 redistricting, Jane Harman was my congresswoman, and I was always pleased to vote for her. My part of the South Bay used to be one of the few real, bona-fide “swing” districts for both congressional and state legislative races, thus the political debate was sharper and the candidates, on both sides, more solid. The ideal candidate for this district was a pro-environment, pro-strong defense, pro-choice, fiscally responsible Democrat and that’s what Jane Harman is.

However, she now serves a district where anybody with a -D. after their name would win — where she faced a primary challenge from the left — and I’m now in a “safe” Republican district, represented by my fellow former Palos Verdes High School graduate Dana Rohrabacher, who was once a self-described “anarcho-capitalist,” and still pretty much votes like one. When I was working with the Port of LA, I heard him propose that the answer to increased post-9/11 port security was for the ports to charge shippers more, with each port free to make its own decision on whether to do this and by how much. He seemed completely unaware that the west coast ports all compete for business; that there was already a long-standing “race to the bottom” on port enviromental mitigations, and the last thing we needed was a similar competition on security.

But I digress.

To reset, Jane Harman is a good congressional representative. She is smart, prepared, and has an independent mind. She has been the ranking Democratic member on the House Intelligence Committee, and in that role has gained national prominence. She has been a good face for the Democratic party when the war against the jihad is being discussed, and would be even better in the role of chair heading into the 2008 presidential campaign.

I didn’t know until today, however, that if the Democrats win a majority in the House of Representatives in next month’s election, Harman will not become the chair. From the NY Times:

Ms. Harman, a moderate from Southern California, has been one of the party’s most outspoken voices on national security matters since the Sept. 11 attacks. But she has also drawn sharp criticism from more liberal Democrats, including Ms. (Nancy) Pelosi, who have privately said that she has not sufficiently used her position to attack the Bush administration for its prewar intelligence failures on Iraq and for its use of secret programs like the domestic eavesdropping carried out without warrants by the National Security Agency.

Losing Harman’s leadership is unfortunate. But get this:

Two candidates whom Ms. Pelosi is said to be considering for Intelligence Committee chairman are Representatives Alcee L. Hastings of Florida and Silvestre Reyes of Texas, both of whom currently serve on the panel.

The selection of Mr. Hastings, who is black, would help Ms. Pelosi shore up support from the powerful Congressional Black Caucus. But he has a checkered past, having been impeached and removed from a federal judgeship in 1989 on a bribery charge. Some Democrats fear that installing him in so sensitive a position would only invite Republican charges of weak Democratic leadership on national security matters.

Umm…ya think? What kind of House Speaker would pull an experienced intelligence expert like Harman for a former judge found to have taken a $150,000 bribe in exchange for a lenient sentence? This is a position with access to highly classified information!  I’m not sure but I believe that among intelligence experts, the term for people who take bribes is “security risk.”

The Times story reports that Harman has been lobbying for the job, and the lobbying has gotten her into trouble — both alienating Pelosi and reportedly (in Time) prompting an investigation into whether Harman “had made improper promises” to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) in exchange for its support of her candidacy. According to Harman’s attorney, former Bush solicitor general Theodore Olsen, Harman is not under investigation, “and the idea that she should be investigated for being a supporter of Aipac is frightening.”

The idea that a Speaker Pelosi would toss Harman aside is frightening. The idea that the Democratic Party, with a real chance to win a majority in an election two weeks from now, would publicize Pelosi’s preference for someone so compromised as Hastings to head up the Intelligence Committee is ridiculous. Karl Rove does not deserve such a gift.

*Update:  Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball have a story up today that fails to resolve whether or not Harman is being investigated for her Aipac ties, but gives a lot more detail on the overlapping agendas of Harman, Pelosi, current Republican chair Peter Hoekstra and the issue of whether the committee was vigilant enough in watching the bribe-fueled lobbying activities of disgraced Rep. Duke Cunningham.

If Harman isn’t being investigated by the FBI, someone is sure making a big effort to make it appear like she is.

Nothing Better than Griffith Observatory

Is there any public space in Los Angeles more wonderful than Griffith Observatory?

It is an architectural gem set against a cliff overlooking a vast expanse of Los Angeles. It is a celebration of a branch of science, astronomy, to which Southern California can stake a proud claim. In a few weeks, it will reopen after a five-year renovation project, but because our friends Todd & Robin Mason have gained the affection of both the scientific and science-history communities in this area, they were invited to a preview opening Sunday morning — and let my wife and me tag along.

The Masons are finalizing a documentary, “Journey to Palomar,” the story of George Ellery Hale’s creation of the Mt. Wilson and Palomar Telescopes that profoundly expanded humankind’s understanding of the universe, beginning with Edwin Hubble’s first observations of  the universe’s expansion, which led to the development of the Big Bang theory that is now almost universally accepted. The Mason’s documentary will be one of the films you can see at the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon, a new theater that the “Star Trek” actor and his wife made possible.

As will the public after November 3, we met a shuttle bus on the Orange Street side of Hollywood and Highland and presented our tickets there. The Observatory will accept visitors via a registration system, but as before the renovation, admission will be free. Waiting for the bus gave us a minute to check out the old Grauman’s Chinese Theater:

We arrived to hear a talk from a volunteer who was clearly excited and proud of what had been done to bring the observatory back — and asked us not to take pictures of the few still-uncompleted details. Rather than going into the front door, which is what past visitors are familiar with, we were guided down a flight of stairs on the observatory’s west side, which leads to a new exhibit area — the Gunther Depths of Space, which covers a lot of information — our solar system and what we know about each of the planets; the stars, galaxies and nebulae; and “The Big Picture,” a 152 x 20 foot image of the “cosmic wilderness” — the Virgo cluster of stars and galaxies.

Here is what the Gunther room looks like:

And here is a detail from “The Big Picture,” which in its entirety shows you a million stars. Each lighted object on this image represents not a star, but an entire galaxy:

Upstairs, you’ll find some of the exhibits you recall, such as Foucault’s Pendulum, and the arresting murals in the rotunda, all nicely restored and probably augmented. But for me, when I got to this floor, I was less focused on the scientific information, and more on the sheer artistry of the building, indoors and out:

You probably remember this monument that depicts Gallileo and Copernicus and other early explorers of the heavens:

…and the walkways around the domes, up on the roof, opening up fantastic views of the city…

…as well as beautiful little architectural details like this:

I am really grateful we got to see this. It felt like a pilgrimage to the L.A. of old, the city and region with a spirit of adventure and discovery–a better place and a better time than L.A. now. But Griffith Observatory is here now, so the present-day is ennobled by it.

(Photo credits: From the top, #1 and #9 are by Todd Mason; #2-8 and #10 are by yours truly. And I hope the volunteers at Griffith Observatory will note that everything shown here is ready for public consumption!)

“The Yuppies and the Junkies Can Have It.”

While watching the Mets beat the Dodgers’ brains in, I checked out a few of the blogs on my blogroll that I hadn’t read in awhile. On the San Pedro-based group blog “Life on the Edge,” the most recent entry is a terribly sad tale that suggests the latest efforts to revive the beautiful but unsettled village overlooking LA Harbor are falling short.

The author is an artist named Marshall Astor, whose nom du blog is “Calamari.” Astor announces that he won’t be posting much on the site for awhile, in part because “I don’t really feel like writing about Pedro at the moment.” The post explains why. To sum it up, Astor ran the Walled City Gallery in downtown San Pedro until closing it in August. (He also has a position at Angels Gate Cultural Center.) Astor had a good rent on the space, so he decided to retool it as studio space for himself and two other artists.

At about the same time we began to transition the space from a gallery to a working studio, I got some new neighbors in my building. The illegal live work, sublet that was a bit of an irritation became at first a hassle and then later, a crisis. I had been speaking with my landlord for half a year about the issue with the sublet next door, and for half a year, he claimed that he was going to evict the tenants. No eviction took place, and in August, more people started living next door, most notably a couple that engaged in on and off, 24 hour a day domestic violence. It was soon obvious that everybody next door was using methamphetamine, and by the beginning of September it had become obvious from the amount of in and out traffic at both the front door and the alley entrance that the place had become a major drug den.

By the beginning of September, it had become impossible to use the backyard, as there was either constantly a semi/non-operational vehicle parked in my half of the yard, or just piles of new and mysterious junk had been dumped on my side. The lock on the back gate was changed. Lumber and paint started disappearing when I would leave it outside. So many people were now living/crashing/hanging out/getting loaded/buying drugs at the space that I didn’t even know who to blame or talk to. When I did manage to bring it up to anyone, it was a non-productive conversation with a doped up, out of it, loser.

The landlord promised to evict the tenants, but never started the process. In the meantime, the building was sold. The new landlord told Astor he would evict the tenants and wanted him to stay — at a significant rent increase. Astor stresses that the rent hike was fair and in keeping with the market, but he wasn’t interested in paying that much. He decided to stay until December 15, and began slowly to move his belongings out. However, he didn’t move quickly enough:

Edith (one of his studio-mates) had arrived at the studio, found the back door wide open. I immediately directed her to the dusty silhouette where my laptop had been before some tweaked out, low life had made off with it. Every box, container or package in the building had been opened and searched, for what, I do not know. My talles was strewn across my desk, defiled and manhandled, and during the high holy days, no less. The remanents of my father’s coin collection was gone, one of my backpacks was gone, presumably to carry off my belongings in. Edith’s stuff was searched, but nothing taken. Someone had spent a lot of time in my place, making a mess, rifling through my personal business, and otherwise subjecting me and my mates to a disturbing and frustrating violation.

They posted a guard until they could return to the studio to move everything out, and turned in their key.

So I’m out of downtown, and due to the level of gentrification, combined with the general decline in the quality of life downtown (I’ve spoken with a lot of police in the past week, they all have heard or experienced that San Pedro has become a mecca for drug activity and more of a “dumping ground” than usual), I’m not likely to have either a studio, or a gallery there in the future. The yuppies and the junkies can have it.

I’ve lived in LA, and mostly in the South Bay/Harbor area, since the late 60s. All that time, San Pedro has been a town on the verge. Not everyone agrees with me, but I think it’s one of the most beautiful spots in the Los Angeles. Some blame the Port of LA, but I should think having such a vital economic force as a neighbor could only help. Besides, container cranes are kind of interesting to look at. They don’t blight the landscape — they’re just more colors and shapes for the morning and evening sun to illuminate.

Why can’t all the powers-that-be line up to keep this gem safe from becoming a “mecca for drug activity?” What a waste if they let San Pedro’s downtown slide into the kind of chaos from which decent, community-spirited people like Astor have to flee.

(photo credits: “Warner Grand, San Pedro,” by My Life as a Haint, “Downtown San Pedro” by Lyan Zurke)

The LA Times: Not Just a Numbers Game

Good luck to Dean Baquet in his fight to protect his LA Times newsroom staff from further cuts. If he’s fighting for quality, he’s fighting an important fight. 

But does everyone think the status quo = quality at the Times?  In a subtle way, the 14 civic leaders who demanded that the Tribune Company stop the layoffs, suggested that the Times isn’t quite delivering to its audience:

If I were the Tribune Company, instead of killing the Times at 100 layoffs the whack, I would take a cue from this letter, and challenge Baquet to revamp the Times and refresh its staff.  There are far too many reporters at this paper who have forgotten how to engage an audience, who don’t want to know what their readers think, and who think the “public trust” rhetoric applies to them personally — as if they themselves were monuments.

I agree that one could argue that a newspaper in the Times’ dominant market position is a “public trust.” Kind of like a baseball team.  “Public trusts” of this nature serve two masters — owners who require profits, and their community, which requires that you live up to your responsibilities. 

But just as the Dodgers improved by replacing their inexpensive, banjo-hitting shortstop with a costlier but more productive one, the Times needs to assess whether all its position players are helping the paper earn the “public trust” designation.  The dramatic fall in circulation over the past several years suggests it is not.

The civic leaders’ letter captured one part of the problem:  Implicitly, they said today’s Times is not “thorough,” and hasn’t kept up with “the civic, political and cultural life of the region.” While it is more diverse than it used to be, there is still a DNA code shared by most Times writers that reflects an insular, arrogant, one-sided view of the world. Subject-matter expertise is spotty. Laziness, both physical and intellectual, is indulged.  So is mediocre writing. 

Some might say the foregoing is true in all mainstream newspapers.  I disagree.  For all its biases, the New York Times remains a bracing read.  (Compare the NY Times’ business section with LA’s — it should be embarassing how much better NY’s is.) The Wall Street Journal doesn’t allow reporters to cover issues they don’t understand, and its stories are edited with an awareness of its readers’ intelligence and impatience. USA Today is edited rigorously to deliver what it promises, a quick but authoritative look at the news.

Compared with these institutions, the LA Times has long seemed the impecunious cousin with a dwindling trust fund.  Tellingly, the other three papers long ago embarked on national editions, in which their “public trust” status is subjected to competitive pressures in dozens of markets. The idea of a national edition of the LA Times seems far-fetched. Who would buy it if not for its coverage of its hometown market?

The Times has been the only show in Los Angeles for decades, and it shows.  Unaccustomed to competition, the Times’ staff interprets the pressure from the Tribune Company as unfair, like cutting teachers from an overcrowded school.  “If we don’t do this job, what will happen to the children?” 

The Times needs to get over itself.  Even as far back as the early 80s, when I first started hanging around the journalistic/civic world, the Times was known as a “velvet coffin” — its reporters overpaid and underchallenged.  In the journalistic world that’s emerging, that sense of entitlement won’t survive.  Readers need to be earned, every day.  Even if you forget for the moment that young people don’t read newspapers, and even middle-aged people are dropping the habit; the serious news consumer now has many more places to go — the best news sites offered by newspapers all over the world. 

They’re going to hate this comparison (I’m not even sure I like it) but perhaps reporters need to start looking at everything they write as akin to a pop song.  A hit is a hit, and now, by adding up the page views, editors and publishers now can see clearly what’s a hit and what’s a miss. 

To make a hit, you have to be inspired, and you have to know what your readers want. I know it’s real, real important to be the “watchdog” at City Hall, for example, but if you can’t engage your readers, you’re a watchdog with no bark and no bite.

The Times should be watching what the Washington Post, another nationally-respected establishment newspaper — another “public trust” — is doing. Like the Times, the Post never managed to get much of a readership for a national print edition.  But the Post has become the pacesetter in the US for online content, and the commitment to Web journalism has started to influence the writing and editing of stories. 

News coverage at the Post is now starting to be seen as part of a continuum of engagement with readers.  Text is no longer elevated artificially above images and sounds.  Reporters regularly engage with readers in chats, and will soon be subjected to reader comments on every story — as its sports reporters are now. Even symbolically, with its Technorati and de.licio.us icons, the Post is telling the Web audience it’s for them.

Mr. Baquet, you might need a different staff of people to make the necessary transformation.  I’m with you; it’s unwise to just make cuts.  Seniority-based layoffs, buyouts and such are no way to retool the Times — they’re a meat-axe.  But you can’t just stare the Tribune people down.  You need to establish a vision for the LA Times of the next 10 years, and begin making choices based on implementing that vision. 

Right now, Mr. Baquet, you are highly popular in the newsroom because you’re playing the strong daddy, protecting the kids.  Don’t get too high off of that.  You will still need to make tough choices — creative choices, but still tough ones.

Off To A Flying Start, LA-style

I guess this must be my day to pick holes in half-baked electoral strategies.

On the Los Angeles city ballot this fall will be the measure to change term limits by allowing incumbents to run for re-election not once, but twice. I wrote about the movement to let councilmembers stay in office four years longer a couple of months ago. Since then, the measure has gotten onto the ballot, despite the fact that it excluded the City Attorney, City Controller and the Mayor from being able to serve three terms, which appalled City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and created suspense over whether Mayor Villaraigosa would allow the vote. (He finally did.)

Besides feeling left out, Delgadillo told the council that their measure would not survive a legal challenge because it contained two subjects: Extending term limits and some changes to the ethics laws for lobbyists that councilmembers say will “toughen” them.

This is a classic strategy. Whatever the public policy merits of relaxed term limits, the council figured the voters would see their ballot measure as purely self-serving. So they threw in some sugar to allow advocates to campaign for the measure as an ethics reform and downplay the part about councilmembers staying in office longer.

Except they forgot about the city’s Ethics Commission, which was never given a chance to review the ethics changes. Now, according to the Daily News (hat tip to LA Observed), when finally given a chance to review the measure yesterday, the commissioners were told they couldn’t say anything about it that might be construed as a judgment on its merits.

Vice President Bill Boyarsky kicked off the discussion by asking how the ethics reform measure on the Nov. 7 ballot would affect the city’s existing rules.

“So instead of strengthening the lobby control laws as the proponents of this measure have claimed, could it be said that it actually weakens it?” Boyarsky asked after staffers advised him that some lobbyists might be exempted from registering under the new rules.

But Deputy City Attorney Renee Stadel interrupted him to warn that, because the ethics package has already been placed on the ballot, city employees or public resources cannot be used to support or oppose it.

And that includes using “valuative adjectives” during an Ethics Commission hearing.

“I am concerned that by using words such as `strengthen’ or `weaken,’ it becomes an advocacy on either side of the issue,” Stadel said.

Effectively, if the councilmembers campaiging for the measure say it strengthens ethical standards, the Ethics Commission can’t contradict them–even if councilmembers are misrepresenting its provisions. I’m not sure how far this rule goes. I guess they can say what they want on their own time, but I don’t know if they can identify themselves as city ethics commissioners.

Seems like a clever plan, except did you notice the point Boyarsky was making? The “tougher” lobbying rules aren’t “tougher.” The sweetener designed to bait the voters turns out to be a bitter pill, if Boyarsky is correct. So LA voters get two reasons to dislike the new measure, instead of just one. Three, if you count the “silencing” of the commission, which is sure to rile the media.
Brilliant!

How Not To Handle a Mildly Embarassing Story: The Mayor’s Rock Star Memo

I would love it, frankly, if I had a staff of people who showed up everywhere I was going 30 minutes in advance to make sure I would be served lean chicken or fish, no starches or sweets, and green tea (hold the four packages of Splenda, thanks), who made sure my breath smelled minty, secured me a parking spot and a place to sit and always, always remained in my line of sight in case I wanted to shoot them a meaningful look, a look that says, “I need you. I want you. Bring a Sharpie.”

Apparently Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa feels just the same way I do. So much so that he had someone memorialize his wish list in a memo. Good idea. Since it’s so easily available on the web, I just might copy it for my own use. In case I get a staff, so I’ll be all set.

What I wouldn’t do, if I were the mayor, is tell my staff to deny what anyone can see with their own two eyes.

Deputy Communications Director Joe Ramallo downplayed the significance of the instructions, calling them “suggested guidelines” that carried over from the mayor’s two years on the City Council.

“Give me a break,” Ramallo said. “This is a mayor who is more engaged and active around the city than any other in L.A.’s history. By the standards of most officeholders who have much larger staffs, he is not tightly choreographed. You’ve seen him in action.”

Villaraigosa’s exacting attention to detail can include impatience at those who foul him up. He grew visibly frustrated last week when a translation system failed to work adequately during a town hall meeting in South Los Angeles. “Fix it,” he barked.

Not only are the mayor’s specifications spelled out in the kind of detail usually reserved for Martha Stewart’s recipes or plans to build a stealth bomber, but the reporter provides examples of Villaraigosa losing his temper if his needs aren’t met. The outbursts happened right in front of him.

So why, why, would Ramallo try to sell the idea that the mayor’s instructions are just “suggested guidelines?”

He wasn’t going to stop the story. It was too good to pass up, and if Times reporter Duke Helfand didn’t run with it, someone else would. As he wrote, the memo was reminiscent of those icky memos from rock stars that show up on websites like The Smoking Gun:

Some date the current wave of celebrity pampering to a mischievous act by a hard-rock band.

The group Van Halen once placed a clause in its contract requiring bowls of M&M candy, with the brown ones plucked out. The Rolling Stones responded a year later by demanding candy bowls filled only with brown M&Ms. From there, the practice took hold — Britney Spears, for one, demanded full-length mirrors and Pop Tarts in her dressing room — and has eventually crept into politics as well.

Vice President Dick Cheney asks that his hotel room TVs be tuned to Fox News, while Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) crafted similarly picayune requests of hosts during his presidential campaign — right down to his preference for noncarbonated bottled water.

Hey, it could have been worse. He could have compared Villaraigosa’s list to Jennifer Lopez’ demand that her extra-large trailer be filled with white flowers, white candles and white sofas.

So why is Ramallo so defensive? What is the point of denying what is plainly true? The mayor is particular. He’s busy, and he’s on the move all day. He doesn’t like surprises. He needs a certain comfort level in order to govern the second biggest, second most-complicated city in America. The city is paying his staff to take care of details so he can do his job, which doesn’t include tracking down Sharpies. What would be so damaging about just saying that?

You make any story worse, from a PR perspective, if you act like the truth is Kryptonite. You’re better off explaining the truth in ways people will understand. Villaraigosa is not the part-time mayor of a small township in Rhode Island. But by trying to re-cast his staffing specs as “guidelines,” Ramallo is telling us, via subtext, that the mayor wants to be seen as something he’s not. That ends up leaving a more troubling impression than the mayor’s passion for Listerine strips.

Been So Hot, Even the Sun’s Wearing a Sweatband

I took this shot Sunday evening at Rat Beach.

Not-So-Tiny Bubbles and Global Warming: News from UCSB

A team of UC Santa Barbara scientists went diving one day in 2002 in an area of the Santa Barbara Channel called Shane Seep, when the earth did something alarmingly rude, though not unexpected.

She belched — a “massive blowout of methane,” that “sounded like a freight train,” as Science Blog relates the story.

“Other people have reported this type of methane blowout, but no one has ever checked the numbers until now,” said Ira Leifer, lead author and an associate researcher with UCSB’s Marine Science Institute. “Ours is the first set of numbers associated with a seep blowout.” Leifer was in a research boat on the surface at the time of the blowouts.

Aside from underwater measurements, a nearby meteorological station measured the methane “cloud” that emerged as being approximately 5,000 cubic feet, or equal to the volume of the entire first floor of a two-bedroom house. The research team also had a small plane in place, flown by the California Department of Conservation, shooting video of the event from the air.

Leifer explained that when this type of blowout event occurs, virtually all the gas from the seeps escapes into the atmosphere, unlike the emission of small bubbles from the ocean floor, which partially, or mostly, dissolve in the ocean water. Transporting this methane to the atmosphere affects climate, according to the researchers. The methane blowout that the UCSB team witnessed reached the sea surface 60 feet above in just seven seconds. This was clear because the divers injected green food dye into the rising bubble plume.

Atmospheric methane is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and is the most abundant organic compound in the atmosphere. The ocean floor’s release of trapped methane hydrate — a form of ice that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure — in bubble form is both a symptom and a cause of global warming, according to UCSB geological science professor James Kennett’s theory.

When ocean temperatures rise, the methane releases are more likely to occur in the form of blowouts, like the one UCSB’s researchers saw. Those bubbles make a marked difference in the quantity of methane in the atmosphere, “thereby initiating a feedback cycle of abrupt atmospheric warming.”

Studies of seabed seep features suggest such events are common in the area of the Coal Oil Point seep field and very likely occur elsewhere.The authors explain that these results show that an important piece of the global climate puzzle may be explained by understanding bubble-plume processes during blowout events. The next important step is to measure the frequency and magnitude of these events. The UCSB seep group is working toward this goal through the development of a long-term, seep observatory in active seep areas.

(Not to make light of this disturbing news, but there is a bright side. Here’s one big blowout in Santa Barbara that can’t be blamed on Wendy McCaw.)

Speaking of LA Radio…

It’s more than a little ironic that, according to the Spring 2006 Arbitron radio ratings released yesterday, talk-radio KFI is tied for first place with Univision’s KLVE, which programs music in Spanish. KFI’s afternoon and evening programming is now almost completely dedicated to tirades about illegal immigration, especially “The John and Ken Show,” four drive-time hours of rabble-rousing. It’s the first time an AM station has been in the top slot for nearly 20 years, so I have to assume that screaming about “closing the border” and the alleged perfidy of MEChA is a hit formula. Bummer.

———

Also, Bud Furillo, R.I.P. The obituaries emphasized his role as sports editor of the Herald-Examiner, nurturing gifted columnists like Allan Malamud and Melvin Durslag, but I got to know of him through his long stint as the lead sports guy on KABC. Can you imagine, a news-talker like KABC devoted three or four hours every afternoon, during drive time no less, to sports? The best show I heard was “The Steam Room” with Bud “The Steamer” Furillo and his partner, usually Tommy Hawkins, but also Geoff Wicher or Rick Talley, which was on the air from about 1979-87.

(Furillo is pictured at right, looking kind of nervous.)

KABC had the Dodgers during that period, so my drives home during baseball season would be all about listening to Bud and Tommy set up that evening’s Dodger game.

Bud’s radio persona was that of an ever-optimistic fan. The Dodgers would win a few games, look like they might be turning a mediocre season around, and there would be Bud, imploring LA: “Are you on the bus? Are you on the bus??” He got me onto that bus many a summer.

Saul Levine and the Long Tail

If you haven’t lived in LA for decades, the name Saul Levine might not mean anything to you, but if someone was going to compile a list of “100 People Who Make LA Great,” Saul Levine would be near the top.

For years, anyone who has owned a “stick” (e.g. a license to operate a radio station) in a major market like Southern California sold it to the highest bidder, who would program it for the biggest audience, to reap the most profits. That’s why Los Angeles radio is so alienating; why most of the AM dial is dominated by redundant right-wing talk, goofy sports or Spanish-speaking programming, and why most of the FM dial plays hip-hop, classic rock or Spanish-speaking programming. Even public radio has succumbed to compulsion to maximize dollar value per program. It’s why KPCC’s once-great music programming was replaced by way too many NPR chat shows, and why KUSC’s daytime classical programming has become so dumbed-down, playing only the movements of symphonies and concertos that are easy to work, eat or drive by.

Except Saul Levine, owner of K-Mozart, a commercial FM classical station, and KKGO-AM, which plays pop standards. According to a lovely profile in today’s LA Times Business section, Levine could sell the FM station alone to a conglomerate for $100 million, which is about $99,999,975 more than he paid for it. He’s grandfathered into having an 18,000-watt signal, when the current FCC standard is just 680 watts. But Levine just won’t sell. He wants to keep his stations independent — and playing the music he wants to play.

Brahms symphonies…Nat King Cole singing “Sweet Lorraine”…that’s what Levine provides Southern Californians, really, out of his pocket. He undoubtedly makes money doing it, but nowhere near as much as he could serving a bigger audience. Levine is a throwback to a time when people chose a vocation out of love, not necessarily to maximize profit. But he also might be a man ahead of his time:

(He) does not want his children, both of whom are involved in the operation of the family company, Mt. Wilson Broadcasting Inc., to sell when he is gone and live off the proceeds.

“You are supposed to work,” Levine said. “I would not want them to sit around on an island in the Mediterranean.”

Levine’s son, who is KMZT’s marketing director, declined to comment on the station’s future.

“He is still the owner,” Michael Levine said quietly.

In the meantime, Saul Levine forges ahead. He loves to talk about podcasting — the station offers listeners downloadable interviews and lectures about music on its website.

“Otherwise, you are in the horse-and-buggy era,” Levine said.

Now, I haven’t yet read The Long Tail, but I wonder if Saul Levine has. Chris Anderson’s book, which evolved from this 2004 article in Wired (which he edits) believes that the “hit” mentality that has driven the media for a century is giving way to those media providers who will cater to non-mainstream tastes — a process enabled by the zillion-channel universe of the Internet. From the Wired piece:

To get a sense of our true taste, unfiltered by the economics of scarcity, look at Rhapsody, a subscription-based streaming music service (owned by RealNetworks) that currently offers more than 735,000 tracks.

Chart Rhapsody’s monthly statistics and you get a “power law” demand curve that looks much like any record store’s, with huge appeal for the top tracks, tailing off quickly for less popular ones. But a really interesting thing happens once you dig below the top 40,000 tracks, which is about the amount of the fluid inventory (the albums carried that will eventually be sold) of the average real-world record store. Here, the Wal-Marts of the world go to zero – either they don’t carry any more CDs, or the few potential local takers for such fringy fare never find it or never even enter the store.

The Rhapsody demand, however, keeps going. Not only is every one of Rhapsody’s top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it’s just a few people a month, somewhere in the country.

This is the Long Tail.

You can find everything out there on the Long Tail. There’s the back catalog, older albums still fondly remembered by longtime fans or rediscovered by new ones. There are live tracks, B-sides, remixes, even (gasp) covers. There are niches by the thousands, genre within genre within genre: Imagine an entire Tower Records devoted to ’80s hair bands or ambient dub. There are foreign bands, once priced out of reach in the Import aisle, and obscure bands on even more obscure labels, many of which don’t have the distribution clout to get into Tower at all.

(skip)

What’s really amazing about the Long Tail is the sheer size of it. Combine enough nonhits on the Long Tail and you’ve got a market bigger than the hits. Take books: The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are (see “Anatomy of the Long Tail“). In other words, the potential book market may be twice as big as it appears to be, if only we can get over the economics of scarcity.

Venture capitalist and former music industry consultant Kevin Laws puts it this way: “The biggest money is in the smallest sales.”

Radio is a classic “scarcity” medium of the 20th century. Only so much spectrum in any given geographic area. Except now, the spectrum isn’t as much of a limiting factor. Each satellite radio service offers more than 100 channels. Internet audio, including podcasts, grabs more and more ears. And services like Rhapsody and Yahoo! Music allow you to program your own audio streams, either on your computer or in your mp3 device, without having to buy the tracks (unlike the somewhat overpraised iTunes, which demands that you buy a track before you can listen to it.)

Now, Saul Levine is a radio programmer from the get-go. His first act after hoisting his antenna atop a flagpole in 1958 was to spin Franz Lehar’s operetta “The Land of Smiles.” And this is what he and his staff still do. They decide what plays, and you can listen. The element of choice that Rhapsody or Amazon give us, Levine’s stations don’t give you — although his interest in creating podcasts is a big clue that he gets it, that choice is the future.

I guess what you could say about Levine and the Long Tail is that he kept the flames burning until the media could catch up with his craving to serve minority tastes. The kinds of music he programs have been in danger of disappearing from the culture, but in LA, classical music rides one of the region’s strongest signals. Some kid might stumble on K-Mozart tonight and hear Beethoven for the first time. And tomorrow morning, try to find more Beethoven in his computer.

Santa Barbara, The Novel*

According to “BlogaBarbara,” there’s going to be a rally of disgruntled Santa Barbarans in front of the Santa Barbara News-Press building next Tuesday, July 18th. The them of the rally: “Build Back That Wall,” meaning the traditional separation between a newspaper’s editorial and business functions that News-Press owner Wendy McCaw is accused of erasing through a series of executive changes that seem motivated more by personal relationships than any kind of business or news judgement.

PR Week’s Hamilton Nolan has a column this week on the News-Press’ turmoil, echoing the LA media’s reaction, e.g. it’s an “acute reminder” that the rescue fantasy of a newspaper purchased by a local owner doesn’t always bring back happier days.

The issue has particular resonance right now, after The McClatchy Co.’s sale of The Philadelphia Inquirer and its tabloid cousin, the Daily News, to a coalition of local investors in Philadelphia headed by former PR man Brian Tierney.

To his credit, Tierney seems to have made all the right moves so far: making all the new owners sign pledges not to interfere with editorial operations, mending relations (more or less) with some at the paper who hated him from his days as a local attack dog on behalf of his clients, and announcing a whopping $5 million advertising campaign to boost readership at the limping publications.

Time, of course, will tell.

Nolan criticizes how the News-Press has handled its media and community relations, saying owner Wendy McCaw has “(tried) to use PR to obscure the situation.” He’s particularly rough on Sam Singer, a San Francisco-based crisis communications expert who has been spokesman for McCaw since the uproar began. Singer…

has seemed disingenuous in his statements about the incident. Asked if any ethical boundaries were crossed, he replied “none whatsoever,” though journalism professors and experts will tell you that a paper that mixes its news and opinion sections and fails to report honestly on itself is being unethical.

Singer also said the departed editors left because they “didn’t see eye to eye with ownership” on the issue of local news coverage; in fact, their very public complaints were much larger and more specific than that. He also tried to deflect questions by saying that one departed staffer was “on suspension for having threatened to kill another staff member.” After naming that person, he added piously, “So there are some other issues in play here that we would prefer not to discuss in detail.”

I wonder if Singer — himself a former newspaper editor — had anything to do with McCaw’s “note to readers” in this morning’s News-Press. Given what so many former employees have reported, it’s hard to decide if McCaw’s note is Orwellian or delusional. Kevin Roderick posted it on LA Observed; here’s an excerpt:

There are some disgruntled ex-employees who are making these matters public. Their media campaign manipulates facts to divert attention from the truth. They are attempting to make this situation appear something other than what it is.

When I purchased the News-Press, I had goals to improve the quality of the paper, to have accurate unbiased reporting, and more local stories that readers want to read. Our readers in Santa Barbara and elsewhere deserve nothing less. These goals clearly were not being met.

This requires journalists and editors to separate their personal feelings from their professional news judgment. Otherwise, the reader is ill served and journalistic integrity is lost.When news articles became opinion pieces, reporting went unchecked and the paper was used as a personal arena to air petty infighting by the editors, these goals were not met.

Some of the people who lost sight of these goals and appeared to use the News-Press for their own agendas decided to leave when it was clear they no longer would be permitted to flavor the news with their personal opinions.

Barney Brantingham, the longtime News-Press columnist, is featured on the cover of this week’s Santa Barbara Independent for his first-person narrative, “Why I Quit the News-Press.” Here’s a taste of it:

Ironically, until the last few months, these years working under the highly respected Editor Jerry Roberts and the great Managing Editor George Foulsham have been my best, my happiest, at the paper. And, even more ironically in view of the current travesty that has befallen the News-Press, this was during the ownership of Wendy McCaw. To her credit, she has always given me complete freedom to write. She has never interfered with my column.

But this idyllic time all came crashing down on July 6, last Thursday morning. Roberts arrived back from vacation to find his job as editor had been usurped by Travis Armstrong, the editorial writer and editor of the opinion pages of the paper. Roberts couldn’t ethically run a news department that was controlled by the opinion side of the paper, and so he submitted his resignation to be effective in 30 days. Always the professional, he was willing to stay on the job to assure that the paper would continue to get out and that the transition would be as smooth as possible. No way.

Instead, McCaw, with her fiancé and co-publisher Arthur von Wiesenberger, decamped in her private jet to areas unknown, leaving behind broken lives, a mangled paper, and Travis Armstrong as the acting publisher. Now Armstrong has the upper hand.

Armstrong, as many know, is a court favorite of McCaw and, as many have learned, is a dangerous man to anger. The author of countless poison-pen attacks on public figures out of favor with McCaw, he has become increasingly contentious and imperious. Now the time of reckoning came for the news desk. Hadn’t Roberts run a prominent story about Armstrong’s recent drunken driving arrest, when he had been stopped by police driving down Santa Barbara Street going in the wrong direction, with a blood alcohol level of nearly three times the legal limit? But when Armstrong was sentenced a few weeks later, the News-Press account of that story never saw the light of day. Only The Independent printed the information. Scooped again!

Last Thursday, I watched in dismay as Roberts was escorted out of his office by Armstrong. According to one witness, Armstrong barged into Roberts’s office saying, “I want you out of here now,” or words to that effect. This was quite a spectacle: A longtime San Francisco reporter and editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, a journalist of the highest reputation in the nation, kicked out by Mr. Poison Pen.

Brantingham’s essay is accompanied by a “News-Press Timeline” that I found enlightening. (Scroll to the bottom of Brantingham’s piece.) The pivotal events took place back in April:

April 27: Publisher Joe Cole announced he was leaving the newspaper and severed all professional associations with owner Wendy P. McCaw so he could spend more time with his family. Cole’s announcement ignited a firestorm of speculation whether he quit or was fired. One of Santa Barbara’s most successful business attorneys, Cole also had served as legal counsel to McCaw and her Ampersand Holdings Co. He is credited with hiring Jerry Roberts — former executive editor of the San Francisco Chronicle — as executive editor of the News-Press.

April 27: On the same day, McCaw announced she was appointing herself and her fiancé, Arthur von Wiesenberger, as publishers. The News-Press reported that von Wiesenberger — a bon vivant, food writer, travel critic, bottled water expert, and owner of the once-famous Montecito nightclub Nippers — edited his high school newspaper in Switzerland.

Meanwhile, I’ve been fortunate to receive two lengthy and astute comments from a Santa Barbara-based reader, “michelmaus,’ that are attached to my first post on this topic. Check them out. He seems very tuned in to how locals perceive McCaw:

However it should also be pointed out that perhaps her greatest sin was that of assaulting a perceived local institution and treating it like a personal bauble whether she owned it or not. You cant pitch yourself as being part of the community and then tell them to eat cake at your discretion it tends to backfire. Especially in a town where the hatred of all things Los Angeles and its accompying lifestyle, has been elevated to a ingrained artform that makes NY/LA sniping look like a game of t-ball. Ms, McCaw seemed to go out of her way to rile the locals in this situation and truthfully if (columnist Barney) Brantingham had stayed it would have been a much easier storm for her to weather. And while I know she isnt from LA she fits the bill for a good portion of the population here where almost everyone has, or feels they do have enough sense and money, that they dont need to have a out of town billionare delivering “burning bush” edicts to them. The last person to do this at the level she chose to take matters was a out of town luxury auto dealership that singlehandly tripled the sales figures for Mercedes in nearby Ventura after comments by its owner soon after they arrived. The tail between the legs departure a few years later was roundly celebrated by the locals as they could now skip the 35 minute drive/self imposed exile to purchase a new benz.

This story has too many juicy angles! It’s an unfolding novel, almost worthy of Balzac. Or, if it had more sex, Danielle Steel.

(*Updated to include news of McCaw’s “note to readers.”)