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ANGELENOS: Regular Enforcement of Parking Restrictions Resume July 6th (UPDATE: Now August 1st)6/30/2020 ANGELENOS: Regular Enforcement of Parking Restrictions Resume AUGUST 1st Sometimes, it takes a stay-at-home order to get a city to [temporarily] loosen their parking restrictions. Luckily for most, in March 2020 the City of Los Angeles announced a temporary halt on fines for violations relating to:
.......while continuing enforcement of colored curbs, city-owned lots, permit parking, and temporarily posted parking restrictions (for construction, repairs, etc.). On my ride last night, I managed to catch up to a parking enforcement officer, who told me that the moratorium had been extended and that normal enforcement would resume on July 6th, (the Monday following the 4th of July.) I just wanted to clear this up, since the resumption date was far less publicized than the moratorium itself, falsely giving people the impression that they were indefinite. Cheers! Avoid those multas. UPDATE JULY 3rd 2020: The LADOT commission has once again extended the enforcement moratorium to August 1st, 2020.
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OBSOLESCENT LAND USES: Christmas Tree Auctions in pre-2010s Los Angeles ABOVE: The checkout booth at a Christmas tree auction in Hollywood. Photo by the author, 2002. As the final year of the decade comes to a close, I reflect upon the changes Los Angeles has undergone over the last ten years. Of course, I reflect upon all the same personal matters that many others do at the end of the year--and hopefully more often than that! However, my reflections as I have grown older have come from other angles as well, e.g. from the angle of an urban planner.
I did not know in 1999 or 2009 that I wanted to be an urban planner in Los Angeles, but I had a keen awareness of many aspects of urban geography. Reflecting on urbanity in Los Angeles just two decades ago is enough to make one feel like they witnessed a whole different era of this city. While the wave of development that has engulfed 2010s Los Angeles is not quite comparable to the real estate boom of the early 20th century or the post-World War II build-out, the 2010s-era development of Los Angeles has nonetheless been massive and unique. This decade-closing piece is about a form of land use that has become mostly obsolete in Los Angeles, an American tradition that in the last fifteen years or so has mostly disappeared into the yesteryears of Los Angeles history: live Christmas tree auctions. ___ MODEL HOME EXHIBITS in LOS ANGELES as detailed in Los Angeles Residential Architecture: Modernism Meets Eclecticism by Ruth Wallach PLUS: The Locations to Which the Model Homes Were Relocated! For my birthday this past year, my stepfather gave me a copy of Ruth Wallach’s book Los Angeles Residential Architecture. Wallach documents the transformation of tastes in architecture during post-World War II Los Angeles, specifically as it related to the advent of model home exhibitions, the emergence of suburban life, and evolving expectations for homemakers, who now learned to use futuristic gadgets. The book approaches these phenomena from numerous angles, with Wallach at different times conveying her analyses from the standpoint of an architect, a landscape designer, an interior designer, a feminist scholar, and an urban planner. Wallach pens a very effective book; at a modest 130 pages, it is packed with insight and information. With regard to model home exhibitions, Wallach details an exhibition that occurred called “The California House & Garden Exhibition,” which occurred at 5900 to 5940 Wilshire Boulevard, between Genesee Street and Spaulding Avenue. The exhibition aimed to promote home ownership amongst Americans during what was a time of tremendous economic upheaval. To do so, the exhibition showcased seven economical and yet elegant model homes by prominent architects. These model homes were, per the shorthand used in the book:
“California House” – Architect: Winchton L. Risley / Decorator: Harry Gladstone “New Orleans House” – Architect: John Byers, Elda Muir / Decorator: Cannell & Chaffin “Plywood House” – Architect: Richard Neutra “English Cottage” – Architect: Arthur R. Kelly & Joseph M. Estep / Decorator: Anita Toor “French House” – Architect: Paul Revere Williams / Decorator: Cannell & Chaffin “Economy Cottage” – Architect: Allen G. Siple and Gordon B. Kaufmann “Colonel Evans Package House” – Architect: Frank W. Green The exhibition opened to the public on April 17, 1936 and ran until early 1938. CLICK THE "READ MORE" BUTTON TO TURN THE PAGE! Telling Apart Gang Tag from Non-Gang Tag I grew up near a public parking lot. Over time, I learned to decipher the meaning of characters used in tagging. The orthodoxies detailed in this article are mostly are those of Southern California Latino gangs.
They are illustrated using a fictitious gang, the Lokal Kidz 13. Looking for South Park? You're on the Wrong Side of the 110. No, I’m not talking about where Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman live.
In the past decade or so, the vicinity around the west and south sides of the L.A. Live has been publicized as “South Park,” and the area’s eponymous business improvement district has further perpetuated this rebranding. The “South Park” I’m talking about is not where the Staples Center is, either. It’s on the other side of the 110. --- At Avalon Boulevard and 49th Street, there is a beautiful recreational area called South Park. The recreational area is part of a larger tract of the same name. Bisecting the tract on its north sides is a little walk street called “Park Front Walk. ” Most of the homes on this street are two stories, average 2,000 square feet, and are built in the Craftsman, Tudor, or Transitional styles. The grandeur of the Park Front Walk homes contrasts with the general vicinity of Slauson Avenue, which contains mostly low-rise residences, commercial fronts, and light manufacturing buildings. My [Hilariously Bad] First GIS Maps IntroductionGIS was one of the coolest classes I took toward my career--and it wasn't even part of my degree programs. I took a crash-semester (2-month) course on ArcMap/ArcGIS at Pasadena City College. The pace of this course, I believe, was integral to not getting wrapped up in the intricacy of GIS--and it IS a very intricate program. Like any complex topic, it is important to have a GIS teacher who knows their skill very well, but also can design their curriculum in a way that a novice would not get lost in the details. (Does this sound dissimilar to your high school math teacher ?)
Luckily, my professor, Brennan Wallace, was able to achieve just that. He was great. Take his class, if you can. No, You Don't Have the Right to the Parking Space In Front of Your House... ...And Other Observations About The State of Parking In Parking In Los Angeles Highland PARK and Cypress PARK are aptly named. When I was a kid, Northeast LA was one of the last places around the City where parking was ample…mostly because there was little reason to visit unless you had ties to those areas. One night, my guitarist told me to give up my space in front of our singer’s house on Mohawk Street, where we rehearsed at the time, so she could park there. Although I was not at all opposed to the idea, I asked him, “Okay, but why?” “Because it’s her house.” It’s a widespread notion people have in this automotive city—that they have the right to the space in front of their house, BECAUSE it’s their house. Alas, I relented, because…why bicker about something so trivial? Echo Park, like much of Central Los Angeles, has become a ground zero for high rents and increased density, hardly mitigated by the small-lot condos springing up everywhere. The weekend influxes of activity in the neighborhood has even spilled over to parking on the side streets. The truth is, you are entitled to the space in front of your house….
…if it’s available. …and you have paid your vehicle registration fees… …and the vehicle is not wanted in connection with a crime… …And there otherwise aren’t any parking restrictions in effect… A MIGHTY BRICKHOUSE:
An 1870s Brick Commercial Building on South Central Avenue... ...was it originally a BARN?! STUBBORN NAILS: Holdout Properties in Los Angeles and Around the World Carl Fredrickson had become very lonely. His wife and fellow adventurer Ellie had died decades earlier, leaving him alone in their dream home overlooking the scenic Paradise Falls, which they had restored together. Presumably, Carl had nice neighbors, but he lost those too, as developers had bought-out most of the homeowners in the neighborhood to build large skyscrapers. If it wasn’t bad enough that the place he called home his entire life was now unrecognizable, a court ordered him confined to a retirement home after he accidentally injured a construction worker. I won’t spoil the ending of this touching story, but I must inform you that it is not a true story: It is from the 2009 film Up. The events depicted in Up are fictitious, but many of the concepts are not, namely the concept of holdout properties. Commercial and residential buildings are referred to as holdouts when the owners refuse to sell them to developers (or re-developers), usually because of pride on the part of the owners, or because the owners do not accept the sum of money that the developer offers them. Or both. And why not? Some things are more important than money. Your dignity is one of them. Holdouts occur all over the world, and for reasons other than (maybe in addition to) pride and low-ball offers. We will discuss some of these reasons, as well as occurrences of holdout properties in Los Angeles and around the world.
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June 2020
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