But, not to universal applause and devout exultations and celebrations that a rational observer would anticipate, in view of the the highest degree of probity and civic  desirability of that which they proposed, and, despite their sole competence and sole interest  in rescuing that vicinity from a vacuum of entertainment and Hollywood Renaissance.

Our young city councilman announced that he had serious problems with a project which didn't implement his ‘vision’ of high-rise condominiums for the vicinity.  He lamented that they proposed but three-level residential heights, & rentals, rather than condominiums, ignored their voluntary provision for affordable rentals, and, objected to excessive parking proposed for all, residential and commercial.. and lamented that the entreaties for subsidization and control by the CRA in design were not accepted.

He rejected their plans for their property, despite their total compliance with plan and code, which would routinely have not involved his office at all, and, sternly suggested that they reconsider and consult with him and his consort, accept  unwanted aid and supervision by the CRA, his planning lackey. They had the audacity to want to pay for and develop their vision on their own, desiring no special zoning or variances from the city!!

This obviously was an apostate affront to the reign of the bureaucrats, endangering their survival with the prospect of a wildly successful private redevelopment which would (however inferentially) cast their horde of failed and subsidised ventures into question.

If you can believe it, our callow young fellow from academia, now ensconced firmly in office and gaining attention with proposals for endless socially subsidized constructs, objected to the fact that the project provided low rise apartments, with comfortable parking and adjacency to commercial needs, rather than high Rise condominiums with limited parking which he favored, in his ‘vision.’

That’s what we’ve come to in California.

We inquire: what are the credentials of this youngster, who has decisively intervened in the arcane civic dictat minutiae & overlay? It seems that:His experience has been solely in academia. His electional credentials: His dad, as City Attorney.

What has he achieved of note in the vicinity? Let’s see:

Well, most recently, to this observer, TWO actions on his part, doomed any possible realization of the singular economic potential of a Hollywood Blvd. frontage block opportunity next to the freeway, unless social & public service uses are Southland attractions. (unfortunately they are, but not to residents who travel to Burbank, Pasadena, & West Hollywood for their needs.)

Hollywood Blvd there, could have sited major commercial uses serving the vast hillside and surrounding residential needs which remain the destination of Pasadena, Burbank, West Hollywood.

Eric Garcetti, via his most recent didact: the block from Gower east to Bronson Ave., the north side, will remain a blight to the eyes, & to the community, serving only the incompetent. Only those who will continue their disgusting and repellant public behaviour, i.e., aggressive panhandlings, fearful appearance, defecations on public and private property, and by default, & mundane city services, denied appropriate off Blvd. sites nearby....

One might ask of him: Would’nt it have been more useful to the community for a major retailer, such as Target or Kmart to locate on Hollywood Blvd. there; rather than for them to flee L.A. to West hollywood and it's terrible traffic congestion?

Better: to find more obscure sites rather than ‘the main ‘drag,’ for institutionalized care of incompetent transients? What are your priorities? And, don't they seem reversed?

His subsidized residential project for Ivar Avenue, housing disabled veterans of the sexual disease and gender confusion, may seemingly result in: an adults only public library, if parental concerns eventuate. That's a first we really need. Again, Eric, what are your priorities?

His endorsement of: the ‘last resort’ conversion of the Hollywood-Broadway Building for ‘loft’ users (by owners, desperate for any use) after many failings. Friends, this ongoing speculative adventure, not only lacks any marketplace confirmation, but ignores the fate of an elegant, but failed experience nearby.

His ‘W’ hotel complex project, @ the S.E., corner of Hollywood Blvd & Vine St. environs, has a long ‘gestation’, with marketplace  perceptions and rejections having long denied financings proposed, and takings of private property  to implement its latest incarnation are underway.

The Pantages Theater, being the solitary survivor of the Council purge of such, is the main life remaining, and a most flourishing one, most happily so. With popular presentations, and mid-America from all the Southland thronging to their presentations, folks being bussed in to realize stage entertainment.

The Garcetti-sponsored redevelopment schemes continue to confound all reason and economic sense, and significantly lack visible civic mandate, One would have thought that the failed Sunset & Vine development would have given pause. The current owners, i.e., Calif. public employees agencies by seemingly covert resignation, will take the hit of this 1/2 vacant enterprise, but their interest is but a minute cost of the loss of this vital location to the revitalization of Hollywood. From the start, the design and realization, have created a massive white elephant.

Eric’s barren thought of siting yet more subsidized housing on the once fabled Vine Street will make such dominant on the street. In all decency, the star themed sidewalks should be relocated.

On Ivar Avenue, only  a dysfunctional governance would propose to site subsidized housing for the socially profligate, diseased and sexually confused, just opposite a famed public library.... It simply beggars imagination.

Ground has been broken in Studio City for  the relocation of our famed KNX, Channel 2 & 9, historically located on the full block of Gower & Sunset Blvd. The land was sold by the multimedia owners, and continued tenancy depended upon affordable lease arrangements if this Hollywood signature business was to remain.

But, no one cared to intervene to assist their cause, no one.... period. Few oldsters even realized their presence not to mention their primal nature in the Hollywood Ethos... Not the Chamber of Commerce, not the Hollywood redevelopment Agency, not the Hollywood Coordinating Council leaders, who had long endorsed a letter to the Chamber urging coordinated action. But not acted for almost a year. When called on about it, lately, the president had no explanation, and the members, all along, were unclear as to its presence [all elderly residents]. Whut kin one say? Duhhh & goodbye.

The same with the Chamber, unlike the Downtown folk, all are employees or outsiders, not Hollywood innovators ...worse, the primal entrepreneur of the Downtown revival, exited our ‘Hollywood Scene’

Update:   KNX & KFWB Radio both moved to a Miracle Mile location. ..with all employees saddened by the need to leave Columbia Square. KFWB’s site on Yucca St & Argyle Ave. was part of the land sale package.

The increasing crime on the side streets. The cameras, however limited in capability, seem only to have diverted assaults and robbery to the side streets. The chairperson of the local neighborhood council district underwent major  surgery to mend his face from street assault.

The ongoing disastrous competition for both street and off street parking for both residents and businesses in the Central Hollywood district. Residents desperately need to regain the on and off street parking resources if they are not to continue to leave and we are yet again to house the least competent and the least concerned with  community, civility and safety, and yet again, just out of prison. Hollywood Blvd. merchants desperately need the ability to offer vehicle parking in some reasonably immediate vicinity.

Happy gossip:  Parking lots on Schrader Ave & Wilcox Ave are said to be slated for multistory parking constructs!!

Proposals for ‘adaptive use‘ of remote and vacant  massive parking structures to serve  local & disparate needs, are predictable considering the financial drain they continue to inflict on the revenues and bond burdens:  but, for now, they are incompetent panaceas offered by the culpable involved.

Preferential parking zones are but an ineffective panacea in view of the massive need.

The sole parking resource open to emergency civic use is: The vast ‘Galpin’ Rental Lot on the 1700 block of Cahuenga Blvd. It presents the optimal, indeed the solitary candidate- resource. Both for Blvd. commerce and residents. The Galpin and Smith families are most civicly engaged historically and thus open to proposals amenable to both their own and public needs.

The stampede to accommodate a ‘fad’ of wall to wall ‘niteclubs as a preeminent Hollywood motif.  We regard this as such: by naive opportunists and supported by  incompetent civic folk & professional applicant counsel, desperate for some use of property.

Urge shunning yet more liquor licensees. If we wish a desirable enduring daily destination for our main market, our hillside neighbors, and our well to do Hancock park residents , we should again attempt to provide for their upscale food desires and retail venues. As of now, all continue to wend  their ways to West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Burbank, Glendale &Pasadena.

All the above: evidence of of our total lack of competent governance.

Comment: Residents desperately need to regain the on and off street parking resources if they are not to continue to leave. Blvd. owners and merchants desperately need the ability to offer vehicle parking in some reasonably immediate vicinity. The Bank building @ Hollywood & Cahuenga managers said long ago that all they needed was parking to sign long term desirable tenants, but now, in desperation they propose remodeling it again for residential use.

Conclusions & Recommendations

A. Residential and Blvd. Parking

Proposed and enacted use of extant massive parking structures serving the ArcLite and the Highland Complex for the local needs via special transit, was absurd. Bussing around potential niteclub patrons has only attracted wayward and disruptive clientele...to the astonishment of those who pushed for it.

Preferential parking zones are but an ineffective panacea in view of the massive need for more parking.

The vast ‘Galpin’ Rental Lot on the 1700 block of Cahuenga Blvd. presents the optimal resource. Both for Blvd. Commerce and Residents. The Galpin and Smith families are most civicly engaged historically and thus open to proposals amenable to both  their and public needs.

B. The stampede to accommodate a ‘fad’ of wall-to-wall ‘niteclubs as a preeminent Hollywood motif.

We regard this as such: i.e., a stampede, by naive opportunists and supported by incompetent civic Folk & professional applicant counsel.

We urge a shunning of yet more liquor licensees.

If we wish a desirable enduring daily destination for our main market, our hillside neighbors, and our well to do Hancock park residents, we should again attempt to provide for their upscale food desires and retail venues. As of now, all continue to wend their ways to West Hollywood Beverly Hills, Burbank, Glendale & Pasadena.

In the latest election, but 130 cast votes, mostly friends or associates of candidates.

The City Council members, despite reality, choose to conveniently hail them as successes and allot trebled amounts to their annual accounts. They are a ripe instrument for manipulation and corruption of process which is currently hampered by the Brown act, and efforts to legislatively ditch this elemental need, are finding some difficulty.

‘Planning’ for the doubling of L.A.’s population: Any evidence of popular support to increase resources, or to ration our limited supply of water, energy?

Absolutely None; rather the contrary.

With our natural resources strained to accommodate the many of us here now, and, none willing to pay for, or, heavens forefend, to spend for the creation: of new and ‘dangerous’ power structures, new and polluting employment, greater and horrid sewage recycling, the acceptance of ‘grey’ tap water, etc., and with AQMD and all environmental forces militantly opposed to the effect of each, one wonders as to any popular mandate. But then, popular mandates don't come easily with dysfunctional representation.

This overview obviously wasn’t evident at the ‘4th District Community Congress’s June 8th’s panel discussion on land use and transportation plannings for this eventuality. So, we patiently heard decent, well paid civic employees maunder on about increasing densities in transit corridors, and employment in our increasingly unaffordable import trade ports of Long Beach, L.A. harbor, etc.

Bud Ovrum, then head of CRA, first disappointed us in his defense of CRA’s public housing architecture @ the S.E. corner of Hollywood Blvd. & Western Ave.  He is now clearly in the deep and troubled sea of L.A., not the tranquil friendly business oriented pond of Burbank.

Founder and long time founder leader of The Sentinels, a neighborhood protective organization devoted to their needs of  street and community peace & security. Member, from inception of the umbrella  coalition of similar neighborhood groups known as United Streets of Hollywood, she achieved many of the civic goals she vigorously advocated. Emphasize ‘vigorous’.

Virgina’s successes are an affirmation that determination and persistence in any cause or activity, reign. That the least heard is unheard..’ That the most persistently heard need is satisfied.

Services were well attended at her church, The Blessed Sacrament, Monday the 25th. With such notables as MIKE DOWNING,  SHARON ROMANO, JULIET PARR,  AARON EPSTEIN, JON JAY, GENE LaPIETRA, present in addition to her kin from Montana, and neighbors. Interment followed in Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills.

Gene LaPietra,  in celebration...

An Historic Enthusiast for Old Hollywood, and generous and innovative host of innumerable civic events, Gene quietly originated, supervised and realized so many major Hollywood events and funded or generously assisted so many causes so as to beggar any specific mention or comparison, in a diverse illustrious lot.

As they, he sought:  not pedestrian nor contemporary praise, nor wall adorning plaques, but the rebirth of that Old Hollywood which he so esteemed.

Thus, when the movement began to separate disparate areas from the City ‘proper’, he joined,  and fully engaged his reputation and his fortune in the contest.

Opposed, were the massive forces, now historically in control. Confronted with this fundamental challenge to their economic and political dominance, their response natural, i.e., total warfare, any mainstream candidate for office or advocating the reform would be forever a renegade from the labor/public union & party entities. This naturally, resulted in a  prudent withdrawal by career intent public men from a patently impossible situation.

Those remaining were the ‘amateurs’, which is to say those still held fast to our founding heritage of the citizen legislator in California till the mid 60’s when the professional ‘mob’ triumphed in the pretext: ‘that citizens were incapable of devoting their broad civil skills to legislation, rather that the ‘times’ required ‘professional’ public servants.

That the defeat of the remaining  ’innocents’ who questioned the rule of the now regnant “professional clique’ was without doubt, nonetheless the machine following victory, inherently understood the need to destroy this heretical notion and its advocates, and evoked it in the classic mode, seeking to defame and economically destroy the courageous proponents. Gene LaPietra, was set to be the enduring horrific example.

Much as Rome did with public Crucifixions and their postings on public ways.

That they failed in their conspiracy was not due to any lack on their part. It collapsed only after a unexpected confrontation with facts by neighboring residents.

Tho thankfully, no crucifixion ensued, their inquisition was message enough to professionals, and, the adage that a lie goes round the world twice, before the truth quietly refutes, sadly obtained.

Gene, has retired from all commercial life and civic activity, tho his innately unannounced  generosities most likely continue. Like Gene, the best amidst us,  simply will not allow publication or celebration of their beneficences. A map should be compiled, for historic needs, of that which they realized.

Housing was but one example of the freedoms that held reign. One has but to look to the actions of the first professional California legislature which profoundly plague us today. Three stand out starkly.

Rental life was then and now a major portion of housing, and a naive, but well meaning legislative action decimated the ethos of that life. The life of a major portion of our residents.  The naive thought, enacted, was that apartment managers had to be paid a minimum wage. On its face plausible, but in reality devastating and unneeded. Managers, largely retired, were present and available to the extended family that major structures were, as concierges are yet today in other lands.  That ended immediately, as a minimum wage for 24/7 availability was unaffordable. They became available for 40 hours per week only. Similarly the resident switchboard operators were unaffordable, and the lobbies, once a place of gatherings, were empty and furniture soon stolen. An atmosphere of fear in entering and walking down the hallways at night became ever more prevalent, and the community ended. Eventually, electronic gates  and fences emerged, and a ‘security industry’ came into being.

In response to a concerted campaign by the ACLU nationwide, with popular stage presentations asserting that the insane were victims and that the facilities the oppressor, and the film ‘One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest’ and the movie ‘The Snake Pit’  starring Olivia DeHaviland, moved California legislators Lanterman, Petris & Short to pass legislation outlawing detention for other than the criminally demented. Thus they came to our streets...and just in time for their arrival...

The legislature found that we were direly short of liquor outlets. South Central L.A. soon had more than 26 States, and in our old Hollywood, where we were greatly discontent with the noise from exiting drunks from the Lido hotel, we soon were the unwilling host to more than 12 liquor licensees. Not without great  community resistance and counsel provided by a civicly minded family, who later gave us a Senator, but in vain. Thus ruin and grief and crime prevailed. Unable to keep their mid American retired tenancy, most all the larger building went into foreclosure and subsequent acceptance of a less civil population, and we became the residential recourse for those out of prison and the insane seeking their medications of preference, liquor and cigarettes. and, overwhelmingly preferring jail to useful institutions.

This was just the beginning. Today professionalism is regnant, having triumphed over reform measures. Two southland counties face bankruptcy.

I was pleased, recently to see veteran political folk in sensible, however timid talk of attainable reform. It’ll be a long and hard road uphill.