Thursday Hotsheet at 3 a.m.

JM, Wilshire Vermont: Ice Cold Urbanism, 1.23.08


Joseph Mailander a guy in la • elsewhere • email

The De La Hoya / Sears Building deal back on again? That's what we hear, and that's what the LA Biz Journal says, without reporting the real part of the deal. Civic seed money could approach $200 million---way more than for even Grand Avenue. The people in Oscar's corner played a little poker after the City balked on the other enormous project slated for the east side, the stem cell center.

Despite the efforts of the gents below, the former fishwrap of record puts out an editorial this morning in support of Proposition S. Basically, their editorial says, yes, there's been nothing but duplicity, but vote for it anyway. We have been saying for a long time now that the biggest problem at the paper is the way it snuggles up to elites while pissing off the City's ordinary citizens, and that the formula for running a beloved newspaper is precisely the opposite of that. Here's one more example: nobody wants Prop S once it's explained to them, but the paper stands on the side of the elites and their trickery.

Children left behind: the Bush administration would make cuts that would close the LAUSD's health centers, the Daily News says.

Red Tape Busters? The Valley now has its own 311 for the City, and it's not run by the City at all---it's run by VICA. Hey, whatever works. It took us about six years to get a street sign that was leaning like the flag in the Iwo Jima picture fixed. Somehow it was fixed the very day of the election in November 2006 in which Tom LaBonge became our Councilman again. Admittedly, I thought the angle was fairly jaunty. Maybe they should bring VICA across the hill.

Above is a photo of the ice cold faux urbanism going for $2000 a month in the faux-urban fun zone at Wilshire and Vermont. People who live in the neighborhood complain that nothing being built in the neighborhood is being built for them, that the new developments just reinforce rather than ease the City's missing rung on the housing ladder. Scroll below to see a photo of lux condos in the same neighborhood. Does it look like of the developments are going to be marketed to people who already live in LA?


Below, JM, Cell Phone ad / "Luxury" Condos, 1.23.08

The Free Market Works

Some people think that chain outlets like Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Starbucks, etc. kill competition and harm small business. However, no less a left leaning blog than CurbedLA has found that Starbucks actually brings more business to competing independent coffeehouses by expanding the category while the upstarts manage to offer alternatives to corporate coffee.

There was a very similar experience in Glendale where competition from an innovative local store was one of the factors that lead to closing down a Home Depot.

Just as they once uprooted veteran retailers like Sears, K-Mart, Builders Emporium, etc. corporate behemoths like those mentioned above are potentially the dinosaurs of the near future when someone else figures out how to do it better.

Ergot - no need for the government to protect us from the likes of them.

And that, Jack Hoff, is the free market perspective.