Show Up At L.A. City Hall Tomorrow, Jan. 13, At 8:30 A.M. -- Unless You Want The City Council To 'Gut The Zoning Code' Without You

ILLUSTRATION BY MATT MAHURIN

This could be you -- if you don't haul your ass out of bed tomorrow morning for the land-use party at City Hall

Each one is proposed as a simple cleanup of messy language or shuffle of "findings" to more useful places in the Code. But put the ordinances together, and it's like a magical decoded puzzle, a la "Beautiful Mind," that lets developers do whatever they hell they want to L.A.'s urban landscape.

Your chance to help save the city from insane, unregulated, sardine-caliber density: Attend the City Council's public hearing tomorrow, Jan. 13, at 8:30 a.m.

Until then:

Read Steven Leigh Morris' "Community Watchdog Cary Brazeman Fights Villaraigosa's Crusade to Allow Development Everywhere." Like we said, the City Council constructed the topic to be tear-jerkingly mundane, but Morris makes it far sexier than we ever thought a six-page war on the Zoning Code could be.

Even ex-LA Daily News Editor Ron Kaye, the king of sexing up City Council meetings on his hotheaded political blog, writes that Morris' piece "penetrates [tee-hee] the complexities of the radical changes under way to city planning rules." And the LA Weekly plugging doesn't stop there:

"If you want to understand why the mayor and City Council are short-circuiting planning protections and processes, why they are gearing up for war against Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to abolish the [Community Redevelopment Agency] and its ability to subsidize unwanted high-density projects, why the future of the city hangs in the balance, you need to read this whole article."

(See, Mailander? We really are allies.)

So brew yourself some herbs for the nerves -- or, better yet, go pick yourself up a spiked milkshake in oh-so-elegantly densified downtown Hollywood -- and get to reading.

Then, if you for some reason don't have work tomorrow and are unnaturally politically motivated, join L.A. Neighbors United at 200 North Spring Street, Room 1010 330 at 8:30 a.m. for the "Core Findings Ordinance" public hearing (read: angry citizens' anti-development soapbox), for which many hardworking people worked very hard so you could attend.

A short message from Neighbors United founder Cary Brazeman (and more Zoning Code-related moving pictures here):

See you there, Los Angeles! Here's all the eye-crossing committee paperwork you should try to sort through first, so as not to show up all uninformed and shit.

And oh, by the way, fine print on the public-hearing notice reads: "The exact time this report will be considered during the meeting is uncertain since there may be other items on the agenda." So yeah... bring a book. Or an LA Weekly. Or make crazy activist friends in the audience (Brazeman just told us he expects a few dozen). Just don't be late.