Thursday Late Night Snack

Westside homeowners couldn't toss out Jack Weiss but managed to broker a deal to get over $7 million from developers. However, its not the HOA's that are seeing the money.

Used to be your home was your castle. Now if crotchedy old white ladies in your hood think you contracted the deadly "mansionization" disease, you're going to have to build your house the way Tom LeBong thinks is in "character" with the neighborhood. Interesting that Jose Huizar has said hold the phone - but he's probably just thinking about tax dollars and campaign contributions than slipping into a free market mentality.

Not sure if this is in "character" with the neighborhood, but some folks are building homes out of old cargo containers. Sounds like a great idea to recycle!

A market based incentive to deal with traffic - toll roads could be coming to LA!

Internet radio host Sarah Symonds is doing a show Saturday on "The Risky Business of Having an Affair," which will prominently feature Mayor Villaraigosa.

As a member of a Neighborhood Council this has me scared - a proposal under consideration would allow each Council to introduce three City Council motions per year. I'm not sure we're ready for this. But then again, democracy is not supposed to be pretty.

I Want My McMansion

The sickness known as anti-mansionization, reported on by both our own Joe Mailander and the folks at CurbedLA, has spread deep to the City Clowncil.

Here's a word to the NIMBY, CAVE and BANANA crowd: you might figure out ways to shut down Home Depots or hospitals but you have no right to tell people what kinds of homes they can live in.

Amazingly, in an LA Times article about a City Council plan that will surely be overturned by a court, Jack Weiss sounds positively libertarian.

Interesting too that the "anti-mansionization" movement contains anti-Semitic, anti-Persian and anti-Asian overtones. You could read more about it at Wikipedia.

By the way, the home in the photo above is that of KFI's Bill Handel, who certainly worked his way up to the place in life to afford such a home. Good for him. That is what it's all about right?

Late Night Snack

JM, Bomb Pop, 2nd & Beaudry, 12.11.07

Just out of curiosity: do you remember a time in LA when the ice cream trucks didn't look like terrorist transport vans? When you could feel safe buying a Push-Up off of one without contracting hepatitis?

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The former fishwrap of record picks up the story on McMansionization. Jack Weiss sounds like he's not for restraint. "But should government take a very long pause before impacting the nest egg of hundreds of thousands of residents? Absolutely." A delightful non-sequitur, which apparently succeeded in baffling the scribes into not pursuing the logical followup: Why, Councilman, do you equate the "nest" with the "egg"? Ask any banker: only a too-dangerously speculative mind thinks that a home is a nest-egg rather than a nest.

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CityWatch Goes Suburban on McMansions

Coming out of CityWatch is a uniquely undercivilized article by one Charles Tarlow, which professes to speak the "truth" about Mansionization.

As prime evidence that McMansionization is good for a neighborhood (yes, there are still some of those in the City who believe this), Mr. Tarlow cites a Dunkirk-level atrocity: the conversion of the quietly marvellously proportioned, human-scale, enchanting modern garden-walkup on the left to the Kaufman & Broad-y, openfaced-garage-hoping-to-swallow-an-SUV, walls-built-to-four-feet-of-the-property-line, trapped-behind-Orange-Curtain, Wango Tango Tract special on the right.


Mr. Turlow opines:

"The only homesbeing replaced are small run down eyesores built back in the 1920's with no closet space, inadequate electricity, woefully little living space, and many of them are more boxy than the new homesthat replaced them. A picture is worth 1000 words. Which house looks more like a box? Which house would you want to live in? Which house is better for the neighborhood?

My guess is that if you along with Mr. Turlow prefer the monstrosity on the right to the serenely dignified beauty on the left you also buy American only, haven't read a novel in twenty-five years (if ever), and hate the idea of women attending college.

Mr. Turlow also, of course, believes that building a Spanish Colonial knockoffs in California in 2007 is a good thing.

Mayor Sam's Free "Free Market" Lessons

Free "Free Market" lesson for all the lovely readers of Mayor Sam: In America, you can work hard and earn the money for the home you want to live in. If you want something with lots of space and you're willing to pay for it, it's yours. Unfortunately some of your neighbors may not agree and are throwing around terms like "mansionization" and "McMansions." Now you might just do something really dumb and spend your hard earned money on a really ugly big house, but hey, it's your money.

Free "Free Market" lesson number two for the pueblos: Big bogeymen coming to Los Feliz and Leimert Park upgrading properties and raising rents. In primarily African-American Leimert Park, racism rears it's ugly head because - gasp - upwardly mobile Caucasians and Hispanics are taking the place of middle class blacks who moved to the suburbs. Over in Los Feliz Satanic, I mean "corporate" interests are raising rents on the ever successful businesses there, well, uh, because they can. Why can they? More people are interested in starting businesses in Los Feliz than space is available for.

In the old days, these were good things.