LOS ANGELES — Hollywood, that mythic land where movie drama was invented, suddenly finds itself caught up in its own real-life drama, one involving high-priced real estate and people taking on City Hall. In this storyline, the issue is whether it is time for a famously spread-out, freeway-centric city’s best known tourist destination to begin looking a little more like New York City by adding a towering skyline and pedestrian-friendly sidewalks. The city Planning Commission recently gave its unanimous blessing to a new Hollywood Community Plan that would allow buildings of 50 stories or more in some areas. The skyscrapers, which planners see someday dotting what they call the Hollywood Corridor, would be linked by a section of subway that runs right underneath the fabled Hollywood Walk of Fame. Planning Commissioner Michael Woo says the proposal is likely to come before the City Council in February or March for the first of several public hearings before a vote is taken. But in the canyons and along the hillsides that make up much of Hollywood’s more quiet residential areas, the plan is already getting a raucous public hearing from people who live in homes that run the gamut from sprawling mansions to century-old crackerbox apartments. Several neighborhood associations are banding together, vowing to fight it. The plan’s opponents worry that bringing skyscrapers to a section of the city that already has seen traffic proliferate with the arrival in recent years of trendy hotels like the W and hot-spot nightclubs like the SkyBar will destroy the ambiance of their neighborhoods as well as compromise safety. They will become prisoners in their homes, they say, their narrow, winding streets blocked day and night by the cars of outsiders while emergency vehicles are unable to reach them. “I love living in Hollywood. I love the craziness,” said Patti Negri, president of the Hollywood Dell Civic Association. “I don’t care when they close Hollywood and Highland for a premiere or when they close the streets for a show at the Hollywood Bowl. That’s why I live here and I’ll take the little inconvenience that goes with it. That’s part of the deal. But this is not part of the deal.” Negri, who has lived for 20 years just up the hill from Hollywood Boulevard and around the corner from the Hollywood Bowl, says this deal would gridlock her neighborhood at all hours, every day, not to mention blocking the neighborhood’s views of the city. If the City Council ultimately approves the plan it would create a blueprint for future development in 25-square-mile Hollywood, an area that is home to 228,000 people as well as numerous production offices, soundstages and tourist attractions. Any new towers would have to meet the city’s strict seismic standards. Although he hasn’t studied it closely enough to say whether it would work, Marlon Boarnet, director of graduate programs at USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy, says the proposal exemplifies Los Angeles’ “transformation from an automobile-only city to a much more multi-modal city,” one where people live and work in high-rises and use public transportation. “Los Angeles in many ways is going to have to grow up, and I mean vertically,” Boarnet said. “There’s a lot of pressure from population growth, land prices and the fact there really isn’t any more vacant land.” During the past 10 years, Hollywood has grown up to some extent, undergoing a renaissance that has taken it from being a haven for crack dealers, street thugs and prostitutes to one of the trendiest, hippest, most tourist-filled spots in town. Several residents who oppose the plan say they do appreciate that change. Musician Chuck E. Weiss, for one, says he has watched in wonder over the years as gang members have been replaced by families walking their dogs at night. That change, he says, has brought a new, admittedly much more minor problem to the neighborhood where he’s lived in a small, century-old house above the Sunset Strip for 30 years. Instead of sometimes hearing gunfire at night, he finds dog droppings in the street during the day. “But if the tradeoff is dog poop for gangsters, I’ll take that,” he quickly adds. What he and others don’t like is the few large buildings they already have seen proliferate along the Hollywood Corridor. One that comes to mind for many people is the Sunset-Vine residential tower. At 22 stories, it is not nearly as tall as LA’s biggest building, the 73-story US Bank Tower downtown. But at Hollywood’s most famous intersection, and wrapped in gigantic, garish billboards that are plastered across every side of it, it is impossible to miss. “That thing is an abomination. It’s always been a clash with the neighborhood,” said Weiss, echoing the opinions of many. Planning Commissioner Woo said he understands some of those objections. “It’s unfortunate that because a lot of the new buildings are not very distinguished, some members of the community are assuming all the new buildings will be mediocre,” he said. “We’re hoping this plan will encourage architects to design more beautiful, innovative buildings for Hollywood.” Meanwhile, he and other officials are quick to point out that while the plan would allow huge buildings in the already densely populated sections of Hollywood, it would also establish tougher restrictions on high-density development elsewhere. “We’re going to preserve the single-family neighborhoods, absolutely they will be preserved,” said Councilman Tom LaBonge, who represents part of Hollywood. “But in some areas, where the subway stations are, we should be developing high density, and the people who live in that higher-density area will use the subway.” Residents are skeptical of that, many saying the recent influx of nightclub-goers has already clogged their streets with people who drive in looking for free parking. “As a metro rider, I love to use the metro,” said George Skarpelos, who lives in Hollywood Dell and edits the association’s newsletter. “But that doesn’t mean people are going to be forced to use the metro. There’s going to be a lot of traffic. There’s a lot of traffic now, and I can’t imagine there will be a solution other than them saying, `People will work it out.’” The rest is here: Should We Be More Like New York City?
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Behind Every Ring Is A Love Story: Share Your Engagement Story With Us!
1930′s Art Deco Engagement Ring There’s one moment no bride or groom will ever forget: the moment they got engaged, which is eternally symbolized by the one and only engagement ring. A couple may exchange all kinds of jewelry throughout a relationship (especially celebrity couples… consider Elizabeth Taylor’s epic collection!) but there is only one engagement ring. Needless to say, the proposal should be just as unforgettable as the ring, since the ring will forever be imbued with the story. This is especially true when it comes to antique/vintage rings, which often carry with them multiple love stories! Do you have an unforgettable engagement story? Share us your story and a picture of your ring, and we may feature you on our blog! Just email us at maryam[at]diamondestatetrust[dot]com. Make sure to Like us on Facebook to find out if you’re a winner! Still looking for a ring? Consider the 1930′s Art Deco engagement ring pictured above. It’s made from rose gold (one of the biggest jewelry trends of the moment) and boasts a 2.57 carat diamond surrounded by a ring of round diamonds and black enamel trim. Pricing available upon request. View original post here: Behind Every Ring Is A Love Story: Share Your Engagement Story With Us!
Occupy SF, LA To Move Indoors?
SAN FRANCISCO — Los Angeles and San Francisco are seeking long-term solutions to the entrenched encampments by anti-Wall Street protesters, hoping to end the drain on resources and the frayed nerves among police and politicians. Officials in both cities have considered providing protesters with indoor space that would allow the movement to carry out its work in more sanitary, less public facilities. Occupiers are debating among themselves about whether to hold their ground or try to take advantage of possible moves. Talks in both cities mark a distinctly different approach than tactics used elsewhere that have seen police sent in to dislodge Occupy camps. Violence and arrests plagued camps in Oakland and New York, while the use of batons and pepper spray against peaceful protesters on University of California campuses has led to national outrage and derision. San Francisco is negotiating with Occupy SF members about moving their encampment from the heart of the financial district to an empty school in the city’s hip Mission district. That would allow the occupiers to have access to toilets and a room for their daily meetings, while camping out in the parking lot of what was once a small high school. The move also could help them weed out drug addicts and drunks, and those not wholly committed to their cause. Protesters in Los Angeles said officials rescinded a similar deal, in which the city would have leased a 10,000-square-foot space that once housed a bookstore in Los Angeles Mall to the protesters for $1 a year. But after the proposal was made public at an Occupy LA general assembly, it generated outrage from some who saw it as a giveaway of public resources by a city struggling with financial problems, and the offer was withdrawn. Deputy Mayor Matt Szabo told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the encampment around City Hall would be shut down at some point next week. “The encampment as it exists is unsustainable,” Szabo said. Whether the city continues to negotiate with Occupy LA for a new location remains to be seen. Occupy LA camper Alifah Ali said she would pack up her tent at City Hall when the order to leave came down in Los Angeles and welcome the possibility of new digs. “Maybe we need to move,” Ali said. “Maybe this will give us room to organize, make our voice clear.” Los Angeles officials initially endorsed the movement and allowed tents to sprout on City Halls lawns. More than 480 tents have since been erected. But problems arose with sanitation, drug use and homeless people moving into the camp. In San Francisco, several hundred protesters have been hunkered down for some six weeks in about 100 tents at Justin Herman Plaza, at the eastern end of Market Street and across from the tourist-catching Ferry Building on the bay. The city has declared the plaza a public health nuisance, though city officials also credit the campers for their efforts to rid the camp of garbage and keep the grassy area clean. Mayor Ed Lee has met with the occupiers at several heated closed-door meetings at City Hall. He’s repeatedly told them he supports their cause and the right to protest the nation’s confounding inequality between the rich and the poor. But they cannot, he has said, continue to camp out overnight in a public plaza. “The mayor is being patient,” said Christine Falvey, a spokeswoman for Lee. “He wants to see some sort of long-term, sustainable plan because the city cannot sustain overnight camping for any long period of time.” Ken Cleaveland of the Building Owners and Managers Association of San Francisco, which represents the hotels and businesses that have been impacted by the noise, loss of tourism and concerns of violence, said some hotels had to reimburse guests who could not sleep, and small businesses in the tourist hub have lost thousands of dollars. “It’s time to move the camp,” he said. “Nobody’s disagreeing with their right to protest or the inequities in society that they are protesting, but it’s not a place to camp out permanently.” A survey by The Associated Press found that during the first two months of the nationwide Occupy protests, the movement that is demanding more out of the wealthiest Americans cost taxpayers at least $13 million in police overtime and other municipal services. Gentle Blythe, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco public school district, said city officials had approached the district about allowing Occupy SF to relocate to the Mission site that formerly housed Phoenix High School. The School Board is considering a facility permit that would allow the city to lease the property for six months. Occupy SF members say they’re mulling over the proposal. “We’re waiting for whatever caveats the city is going to come back at us with,” said Jerry Selness, a retired Navy medic from Eugene, Ore., who has volunteered for a more than a month at the Occupy SF medical tent. “I do feel that we’re at a crux point here: we are either going to give this movement enough time to be able to make our next move, which will be to not only to move this camp, but move to a new phase in the way that we occupy,” he said. There is debate among the occupiers in San Francisco as to whether it’s better to stay put, move to another long-term location or make quick hit-and-run occupies at symbolic sites such as bank lobbies and foreclosures auctions. “For instance, there’s a neighborhood in San Francisco right now where they’re foreclosing on 11 houses in one street,” Selness said. “What a perfect place for us to occupy.” — Hoag reported from Los Angeles Read more from the original source: Occupy SF, LA To Move Indoors?
Eleventh Hour Proposal: Man Gets Down on One Knee at LAX at 11:11 on 11/11/11
Having a baby born at the right moment is a coincidence — but proposing at the right moment takes planning. Not only did Alexander Williams pick 11/11/11 to propose to his girlfriend Dionne Savage, he wanted to do it at the ticket counter where he met her two years ago. more › Continue reading here: Eleventh Hour Proposal: Man Gets Down on One Knee at LAX at 11:11 on 11/11/11
Get Out: Dennis Hopper, Free Museum Admission & Ceramics
Get out! Get up! Visit Norton Simon and explore Dennis Hopper’s legacy is on California art or go to one of (at least) six museums that are offering admission this weekend and a ceramic show. more › See the article here: Get Out: Dennis Hopper, Free Museum Admission & Ceramics
Josh Welsh: Studying the Economics of Independent Film: A Proposal
As we wrap up the eighth annual Film Independent Forum , I’m struck by the amount of discussion about the economics of independent film lately, and the widely divergent perceptions of where we are right now. Some people point to a good sales year at Sundance and see it as a sign that the indie business is back to some degree of health. Others continue to find the basic model of indie financing and films sales to be broken, one decent year at Sundance notwithstanding. The problem, it’s argued, is that it’s almost impossible to sustain a career as an independent filmmaker, financially speaking. One of the best recent pieces on this topic was Ted Hope’s blog back in August, ” How Much Does An American Indie Producer Get Paid? ” Hope breaks down how much a starting producer, and how much an experienced producer, can expect to get paid on a film these days. The numbers aren’t pretty, to say the least, and they lead to a sobering conclusion: “Recognizing what it costs to live in NYC, it looks like one might need to produce 5-10 features a year to make it work. It doesn’t leave much room for a hands-on craft-oriented approach to producing.” And of course the question that Hope is asking about producers could also be asked about any number of other positions in independent film. Hearing so many people talk about the difficulty of sustaining a career in independent film can create the impression that there is truly no business here, and that indie film, as the IRS recently argued about documentary film, is more of a hobby than a for-profit business. (See Paul Devlin’s excellent piece on this IRS case at Filmmaker Magazine.) But while it’s obviously true that it’s hard for many independent filmmakers to sustain a career doing what they love, it is simply false that there’s no money in independent film. This fact should be obvious, but it apparently needs to be stated: there is a lot of money in independent film. Money changes hands every time someone makes a film, regardless of how small the budget. Money changes hands every time a festival screens a film, regardless of how famous or obscure the festival. Money changes hands every time a company puts sponsorship dollars towards a festival. Money changes hands every time a distributor buys and releases a film, no matter how small the release. And so on. The amounts changing hands might be very small or very large, and those amounts may or may not ever go into the filmmakers’ hands. Regardless of who is profiting and by how much, however, there is undeniably a lively sphere of economic action here that we might as well call the independent film business. The sheer number of films being made each year, the number of festivals springing up to screen them, and the number of agents, attorneys, sales agents and publicists working the indie film beat, is evidence enough for general conclusion: it’s economically worthwhile for lots of people to be involved in independent film. While there’s nothing wrong with focusing on the plight of the individual filmmaker in all of this, I propose that we step back and take a much bigger picture. What’s really needed is a study that will look at independent film as a broad sphere of economic activity and that will try to measure this sphere as accurately and dispassionately as possible. How much money is being spent annually on independent film — not just box office dollars, which the MPAA measures annually, but on production, festivals, sales, marketing, agency fees, box office, etc.? In independent film, who is spending and on what? Is that total amount increasing or decreasing over time? The study would provide as much detail as possible about what types of people and organizations were involved in those economic transfers along the way — cast and crew, rental houses, labs and post facilities, agents, managers, attorneys, producer reps, publicists, festivals, theatrical and non-theatrical distributors, theater owners, etc. It would be interesting to learn, too, something about wages for filmmakers: how many of the filmmakers (writers, directors, producers) were paid for their work, and how many of them saw any additional profit from their films if and when their films sold? Getting comparable information on the distributor’s side would be essential, too — how much was spent on P&A, which films were profitable and by how much, etc. (I know, I know — hard figures to get!) A couple of objections to this proposed study: first, it’s notoriously hard to define ‘independent film’ and for purposes of such an economic study you would need to have a clear, workable definition that everyone could agree on. Second, many people in independent film are loathe to reveal numbers — filmmakers understandably give cagey answers about their budgets, distributors are often accused of being notoriously un-transparent in their accounting, etc. Given that, how could anyone possibly measure something as slippery as the economic activity in independent film? The honest answer to this second question is that it would not be easy but there’s no reason to think it’s impossible. People in other businesses have the same interest in concealing information and playing their cards close to the vest, but there are good economic studies of lots of industries. What’s missing today is serious, in-depth, economic investigative journalism that takes a real look at independent film. With regard to the first objection, that independent film is too hard to define: true enough. So here’s another proposal: instead of trying to do an economic study of all of independent film (whatever that is), lets start by taking one very small segment of the film business that we can agree is pretty obviously part of independent film. Let’s begin by focusing on the narrative films to play in U.S. Dramatic Competition at Sundance. And let’s focus on one particular year — films that played there, say, three or four years ago. Those films have presumably run their course, economically speaking. If they’re going to sell, they have probably sold by now; if they are going to reach an audience, they have presumably done that by now as well, at least in large measure. Someone might argue that focusing on films in Sundance’s Dramatic Competition could only result in a very skewed picture of independent film. After all, those films would presumably have a much higher profile than films from the same year that didn’t get into any major festival, so you can’t really extrapolate from them at all. True enough. But the point here is not to extrapolate or to draw broader conclusions — at least not yet. It’s really just about selecting one clearly defined group of independent films, and studying their economics as closely as possible to see what we find. Even focusing on that small group of films, this study obviously would be enormously challenging to pull off. I have no idea what the results would look like, but I bet they would be fascinating. Each year at the Forum, Film Independent compiles detailed, written case studies of films that recently played the festival circuit and either sold or did not, either did well theatrically or did not, etc. These case studies, which are based on the filmmakers’ frank and revealing first-person accounts of the sales process, could form the first part of this kind of economic study. Here’s hoping that some intrepid journalist or economic historian attends this year and decides to try to paint the full picture. Original post: Josh Welsh: Studying the Economics of Independent Film: A Proposal
