Boing Boing » la

Guy on hood of moving pickup begs passing drivers to call the police

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 28 May 2013 19:22:36 +0000

Have you seen a video floating around showing a guy on the hood of a moving pickup truck, begging people to call the police? When I saw it, I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on, but thankfully, some context is now in hand: it's all down to Baton Rouge's notorious "sign guy," a hoarder who confiscates roadside signs put up by local businessmen and fills his backyard with them:

BATON ROUGE, La. - A man pleaded for help after jumping on the hood of a moving truck on Coursey Blvd. after his sign was picked up, according to Baton Rouge Police Cpl. Tommy Stubbs.
Stubbs says the man was on Coursey selling shrimp when another man driving a pickup truck pulled over and picked up his sign.
When the man in the truck went to pull off with the sign, the man selling the shrimp jumped on the hood of the pickup.

Man pleads for help on hood of truck in Baton Rouge [Troy Gaulden/WBRZ] (Thanks, Spocko)

Beautiful vintage jetpack-futurist car

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 24 May 2013 01:28:19 +0000

On Super Punch, set of photos of a beautiful, enbubbled, betailfinned Los Angeles land yacht spotted on the 101. Hoo-ah.

Saw a this on the 101 in Los Angeles today. It was caravanning with a bunch of classic cars.

Rumor: Koch Brothers to buy 8 major newspapers, including LA Times

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 01 May 2013 20:38:37 +0000

The Koch Brothers -- billionaire ultra-conservative puppet-masters and Tea Party funders -- are rumored to be in talks to buy eight newspapers, including the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel and Hartford Courant from the Tribune company, which is emerging from bankruptcy protection. Half of the LA Times's newsroom has threatened to quit if the Kochs take over.

One thing sure to happen if the Koch brothers take over the paper is a conservative agenda on the editorial page. As other newspapers have cut back on editorials and endorsements, the Times is now often the only LA news outlet that issues endorsements on political candidates and on ballot measures and initiatives. This is particularly crucial in California, where even the most educated voter is left clueless and confused -- or worse, tricked -- after reading the state propositions put on the ballot by Californians who simply gathered enough signatures to push a private agenda.
If the Times' editorial page is filled with the Koch brothers' libertarian opinions, other journalists in LA will need to step up and voice opposing views.

If Koch Brothers Buy LA Times, Half of Staff May Quit (VIDEO) [Kathleen Miles/HuffPo]

(via Reddit)

(Image: LA Times, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from 24293932@N00's photostream)

Documentary on the Cydwoq shoe factory

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 02:26:08 +0000

As mentioned before, I'm a big fan of the beautiful handmade shoes from Cydwoq, who manufacture their wares to order in Los Angeles. Here's a short and beautiful documentary on their factory and manufacturing techniques.

Disneyland Dapper Day: when Disney fans dress up

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 03:28:30 +0000

Disneyland fans have created many of their own theme days, some of which I've been lucky enough to happen upon or attend -- Bats Day (goths); Gay Days, and more. But I didn't know about Dapper Day, where 10,000+ people descend on Disneyland and Walt Disney World in natty outfits and style their way through the fun park. Just looking at the official gallery makes me want to mark this in my calendar for next year.

"People are looking for an excuse to dress up," said Justin Jorgensen, who started Dapper Day in 2011 and has organized five of the events, all at Disneyland. The latest Dapper Day — the same Sunday as the Oscars, Hollywood’s own dress-up day — drew an estimated crowd of 10,000 to the Anaheim park and about 1,000 more at Florida's Disney World.
"Everything, including the workplace, pushes this idea of being casual," said Jorgensen, 38, of Burbank. "When do I get to wear my great stuff?"
Most of those in attendance that day were in their 20s and 30s. They had come of age in a time of shoulder-padded power suits, windbreakers in neon colors and frizzy hair — not exactly a time that will be remembered for its classic elegance.
"I think people like history, people love nostalgia," said Heather A. Vaughan, a historian studying 20th century fashions. "People love imagining a time they didn’t live in."

Dapper Day at Disneyland, the nattiest place on Earth [LA Times/Rick Rojas]

(Photo: Christina House)

Los Angeles is not full of self-driving pod cars (and other disappointments from a 1988 view of 2013)

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:30:01 +0000

In April 1988, the LA Times Magazine published a cover article predicting what the spring of 2013 would look like for the typical Angeleno family. In a story that is bound to give you disconcerting flashbacks to Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains", a family of four (and their automated house full of whirring robots) goes about a full day — from mandatory staggered work times beginning at 5:15 am, to 11:00 pm, when the lady of the house sits down with her laser disc of The Collected Works of Jackie Collins. (Creepily, the story ends with the house catching fire. I'm not kidding about the Bradbury shout-outs.) Not all the predictions were totally off base, but, as a whole, it's definitely a neat example of how hard it is to look at current technology trends and correctly extrapolate them out to the future.

Young pro-science/anti-Creationism activist wins TroubleMaker award

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 03:35:04 +0000

Zack Kopplin, the 19-year-old anti-Creationism/pro-science activist I wrote about last month, has won the TroubleMaker Award, which comes with a $10,000 prize.

Zack’s bold campaign to repeal the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) has made waves in state politics and in public education. Kopplin has gathered the support of 78 Nobel Laureate scientists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the New Orleans City Council, and other major organizations. His petition to repeal the law has 74,000 supporters across the US. Working with Louisiana State Senator Karen Carter Peterson, Zack has fought for two bills to repeal the LSEA. He has spoken out before the Louisiana legislature and State Board of Education, debated creationist politicians, held rallies, and had been covered in hundreds of interviews in national and international media. Kopplin is preparing to fight for a third repeal bill.
Zack plans to use the $10,000 awarded to him to increase the impact and reach of his campaign. The funds will greatly aid Zack’s most recent venture to call for accountability on the issue of millions of dollars in school vouchers being spent to fund schools across the US that teach creationist ideas. He also plans to use this money to help build the Second Giant Leap movement, which calls for a permanent end to science denial legislation and for a trillion dollars of new science funding in the next decade.
Kopplin said, “We need a Second Giant Leap for Mankind and we need a student movement of troublemakers and truth-tellers who are willing to stand up and speak out to make this a reality.”

Troublemaker Award (via IO9)

Exhibit of LA buildings that never were

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:35:35 +0000

Wired reports on a nearly complete Kickstarter to mount an exhibit of grand and glorious LA buildings that were never built, including the design for LAX shown above:

Wired: What is it with Los Angeles and mega scale architecture?
Goldin: Los Angeles had room to grow, with few geographical limitations, except the Pacific Ocean. All that open space engendered a spirit of wide imagination, and the two fed off each other. Los Angeles has also always been a place to jettison the past and begin anew, and from the beginning the city developed a reputation for embracing originality and reinvention. The happenstance of early aviation and aerospace and the creative, sometimes over-the-top spirit of Hollywood, only further fueled the imagination. Everything seemed possible.

Documenting the Never-Built Dreams of the City of Angels [Wired/Tim Maly]

Kickstarting the LA Makerspace

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:46:53 +0000

James sez,

The Los Angeles Maker Space is an inspiring project that comes along only once in a while, and many people apparently realize this. They reached their $15K funding goal within 30 hours of starting the plea. They are now guaranteed to have an expensive laser cutter and a couple of 3D printers in their space, yay kids!
However, these amazing tools will sit unused a lot more than they should if they do not reach their secondary funding goal of $25,000. This money will pay for live, talented adults to open and supervise the space on weekends. Recent events have shown us how important our children are, and how important qualified, responsible supervision of them is. Please visit their kickstarter page today and lets see their second goal hit the rear view mirror too, done, and done.

LA Makerspace needs 3D Printers, a Laser Cutter, and Open Project Time for Members to Innovate. (Thanks, James!)

Library gift-shop, on wheels, in LA

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 03:19:53 +0000

Katie from the Library Foundation of Los Angeles sez, "The Library Store On Wheels, a mobile truck version of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles' beloved Central Library gift store (which LA Weekly named 'LA's Best Gift Shop'this year) hits the road December 10. Over the next two weeks, we'll be taking the mobile store around to different Los Angeles Public Library branches, as well as Amoeba Music. Packed to the gills with the most lovingly-curated selection of lit-themed gifts and nostalgic library decor, all proceeds from the store will go to benefit the Los Angeles Public Library."

Caviar vending machines in LA malls

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 14:00:47 +0000

Caviar vending machines have been installed in three upscale malls in LA. In addition to $500/oz caviar, they also dispense blinis, mother of pearl spoons, and other caviar essentials. The vending machines (they're billed as "ATMs for caviar") can be found at Westfield Century City, Westfield Topanga, and the Burbank Towne Center. Apparently, these are old news in Russia, where they are favorites of oligarchs and their entourages.

Finally! Caviar by ATM (via Super Punch)

Portraits of LA voters

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 10:19:49 +0000

Dan sez, "Two LA-based photographers shot photos of voters 'to document and celebrate the diversity of the Los Angeles electorate. All photographs were taken outside of polling locations across the city on Election Day, November 6th, 2012.' I especially like this one.

(Thanks, Dan!)

New Secret Headquarters sister store in LA

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 19:22:16 +0000

Secret Headquarters, my favorite comic store in LA (a very competitive field!), has opened a sister-store called Thank You Comics and Books, in Highland Park.. It's bound to be one of the great awesomesauce emporia on the west coast.

Bacon ice cream sliders

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 22:02:08 +0000

Further nutritional oddments from a touring author (see yesterday's installment). I stopped into the most excellent indie bookstore Diesel at the Brentwood Country Mart in LA for my Pirate Cinema book tour, and noticed that the ice-cream parlour next door was advertising bacon-spiked ice-cream sliders, as well as a corn and spicy cheese crisp ice-cream sandwich.

I'll be in Lansing, MI tomorrow (tell your friends), and look forward to discovering more characteristic local cuisine.

Bacon and spicy corn Ice Cream Sliders, Brentwood Country Mart, Los Angeles, California, USA

Cory in Redondo Beach today

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 15:00:43 +0000

Yo, Redondo Beach! You're my last west coast stop on this leg of the Pirate Cinema tour, and I'll be at Mysterious Galaxy today at 2:30PM (I'll be back on this coast later to visit Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle). Tomorrow, I'll be in Lansing, MI, before a multi-day Chicagoland extravaganza. The tour has stops in cities across the US and Canada -- see the full schedule for details. Come on out and meet your fellow happy mutants!

Cory in Pasadena this aft

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 15:01:20 +0000

Hey, Pasadena! I'm signing and speaking at Vroman's Bookstore this afternoon at 3PM, as part of the Pirate Cinema tour. I'll be in Rendondo Beach at Mysterious Galaxy tomorrow, before heading east to Lansing, MI, then Chicago, NYC, Bethesda, Edmonton, and many other cities in the US and Canada. Here's the full schedule -- I'm looking forward to meeting you!

Garage door that looks like a book-case

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:17:13 +0000

LA Observed republished this photo of a garage-door painted to look like a magnificent outdoor book-case, apparently ganked from author Robert Crais's Facebook (I don't have a FB account, so I can't verify this).

LA garage door painted to look like bookshelves (via Super Punch)

Bookmobile, 1928

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 22:16:29 +0000

This bookmobile for the sick was wheeled around Los Angeles hospitals in 1928, a service of the LA public library.

Bookmobile

Caine's Arcade raises $164K for scholarship; $164K more for other creative kids

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:45:08 +0000

A followup to the wonderful Caine's arcade story Mark blogged two weeks back: the Internet's many users were so impressed by Caine's ingenuity that they raised $164,000 for his college fund. The funds are matched 1:1 by the Goldhirsh Foundation, and these matching funds are earmarked to fund the Caines Arcade Foundation "which will help find, foster, and fund creativity and entrepreneurship in young kids."

World's most distracted driver?

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:19:06 +0000

A 29-year-old woman in Torrance, CA, has been arrested for driving on the 405 freeway while texting on her cellphone, with a kid in the back seat without a seatbelt, another kid in the back seat in an unsecured child seat, and an infant on her lap, while her license was under suspension.

At least one other driver on the road spotted the woman chatting and texting on her phone with the baby on her lap and contacted the police. When she was pulled over, she was still holding onto the baby, presumably because it would be cruel to put him in the glove compartment.
"Her excuse was that, while she was driving on the 91 Freeway near Compton, the 1-year-old started crying and in an effort to comfort the 1-year-old, she pulled the 1-year-old to the front seat," a police department rep tells CBS Los Angeles.

Happy distracted driving awareness month!

California Woman Takes Distracted Driving To Entirely New Level

Resin octopus

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 18:00:55 +0000

Judy Fox's "Octopus" is an awfully lovely piece -- it's repped by LA's Ace Gallery.

Octopus, 2009 Sculpted in terra cotta, cast in poly resin and painted with casein paint

LA Zine Fest: Feb 19

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:00:56 +0000

Inky-handed, staple-punctured mutants, start your engines! The LA Zine Fest comes to the Spring Arts Tower (453 S. Spring Street) on Feb 19, from 11AM to 5PM.

Team False Start is a collective of zine-enthusiasts dedicated to promoting zine culture as a means to connect the pre-exisiting communities in L.A.–artistic or otherwise. We aim to create opportunities for people to share self-published works and host events that encourage ideas to spill out onto paper in pictures and words. We believe that by embracing the urge to create and sharing ideas there can be a more robust and formidable local zine community that extends beyond bookstores and bedrooms. In order to accomplish these goals, we are organizing an event that has been needed for a long time: Los Angeles Zine Fest 2012! This is an opportunity for So-Cal zinesters to come together en masse and meet and exchange ideas with those from all over the country.

lazinefest 2/19/12 (Thanks, puppetisto!)

American sf convention costumers of the 1980s

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 20:06:30 +0000

Here's a great gallery of Dik Daniels's photos of science fiction costumers from the conventions of the 1980s, when I was a teenaged con-goer. If only I'd had a little more forward planning nous, I'd have been one of those costumed folken!

Dik Daniels photos: 1980 Westercon (Thanks, Jukevox!)

LA City Attorney to Occupy: pay for brainwashing lessons on limits of free speech and we'll drop the charges

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:00:06 +0000

The Los Angeles City Attorney's Office has offered Occupy protesters a get-out-of-jail card: all they need to do to skip their court dates is pay $355 for private "free speech lessons" where they will be taught a highly selective version of Constitutional law that holds that the First Amendment doesn't include the kind of protest they enjoy.

It's like they combined traffic school with Maoist "self-criticism sessions" from the Cultural Revolution to make something worse than both combined.

As a civil rights attorney working with some of the approximately 350 protesters who have been arrested in recent weeks noted, the offer is nothing short of "patronizing."
However, it's much more than that. It's a disgusting and cynical way to alleviate the strain on city courts by having protesters pay for an unofficial guilty plea.
In short, the city is offering protesters the chance to purchase courses in which they will learn about the free speech LAPD officers stripped from them.
Apparently, in L.A., you can pay to learn about the free speech you don't actually have.

NOT SATIRE: L.A. Tells Arrested OWS Protesters They Can Pay for "Free Speech" Classes to Avoid Court (Thanks, phosphorious!)

(Image: Police Lines blocking City Hall entrance, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from neontommy's photostream)

First-hand account of Occupy LA arrest

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:22:03 +0000

Patrick Meighan, a writer on Family Guy, describes his arrest at Occupy LA, part of a brutal crackdown on 292 protesters whose belongings were destroyed and who were then subject to cruel (and in Mieghan's case, possibly crippling) detention. Meighan explains why he did it:

So that’s what happened to the 292 women and men were arrested last Wednesday. Now let’s talk about a man who was not arrested last Wednesday. He is former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince. Under Charles Prince, Citigroup was guilty of massive, coordinated securities fraud.
Citigroup spent years intentionally buying up every bad mortgage loan it could find, creating bad securities out of those bad loans and then selling shares in those bad securities to duped investors. And then they sometimes secretly bet *against* their *own* bad securities to make even more money. For one such bad Citigroup security, Citigroup executives were internally calling it, quote, “a collection of dogshit”. To investors, however, they called it, quote, “an attractive investment rigorously selected by an independent investment adviser”.
This is fraud, and it’s a felony, and the Charles Princes of the world spent several years doing it again and again: knowingly writing bad mortgages, and then packaging them into fraudulent securities which they then sold to suckers and then repeating the process. This is a big part of why your property values went up so fast. But then the bubble burst, and that’s why our economy is now shattered for a generation, and it’s also why your home is now underwater. Or at least mine is.
Anyway, if your retirement fund lost a decade’s-worth of gains overnight, this is why.

My Occupy LA Arrest, by Patrick Meighan

Cedar-Sinai takes cancer sufferer off transplant list for taking the medical marijuana its doctor prescribed

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 21:04:31 +0000

Norman B. Smith was diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer by his doctor at LA's Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, who prescribed medical marijuana. Now, Cedars-Sinai has removed Mr Smith from the list of liver-transplant candidates...because he tested positive for marijuana, which their own doctor prescribed.

Hospital officials are insisting that Smith stop using marijuana for at least six months, undergo random drug testing, and participate in weekly substance-abuse counseling before they will consider putting him back on the list.

L.A. Hospital Denies Liver Transplant to Medical Marijuana User Despite Prescription from Its own Doctor (via Reddit)

Long Beach Police Chief: we detain photographers, and I don't have any guidelines for that policy, photography is classed with attempts to acquire weaponized smallpox

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 16:06:33 +0000

The Police Chief of Long Beach has confirmed that his department's policy is to detain photographers who do nothing more than take pictures in public places, and that he neither has, nor plans to implement, any guidelines for these detentions. He classes photography with other "suspicious activity" such as "attempts to acquire illegal or illicit biological agent (anthrax, ricin, Eboli, smallpox, etc.)" and "In possession, or utilizes, explosives (for illegal purposes)."

"If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery," says McDonnell, "it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual." McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.
McDonnell says that while there is no police training specific to determining whether a photographer's subject has "apparent esthetic value," officers make such judgments "based on their overall training and experience" and will generally approach photographers not engaging in "regular tourist behavior."
This policy apparently falls under the rubric of compiling Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) as outlined in the Los Angeles Police Department's Special Order No. 11, a March 2008 statement of the LAPD's "policy … to make every effort to accurately and appropriately gather, record and analyze information, of a criminal or non-criminal nature, that could indicate activity or intentions related to either foreign or domestic terrorism."

Police Chief Confirms Detaining Photographers Within Departmental Policy

(Image: Perfection, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from omaromar's photostream)

Walt Disney's house for sale

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:41:14 +0000

Walt Disney's handsome four-bedroom house and its grounds are up for sale in Los Feliz, a neighborhood in east LA. Disney had the house built to his specifications and occupied it from 1932 to 1950. The list price is $3.65M, not bad for a house that's pretty beautiful, on a big piece of land in the middle of a hip (and generally fun) neighborhood.

The House That Mickey Built: Walt Disney's Estate in Los Feliz (curbed.com)

Walt Disney LA Home 4053 Woke Way (Realtor's site)

(Thanks, Mike!)