Los Angeles News Blog

On the evening of June 26, with the right kind of ears, a steady, collective groan could be heard from thousands of gay Republicans throughout California…followed by an eerie silence. Their man, Senator John McCain, decided to play small ball in his quest for the White House, and came out with a two-line endorsement of the anti-gay marriage ballot measure, now officially known as Proposition 8. It was a move, according to one political strategist, to “solidify his base.” But over the coming months, it can easily be spun into something much more different.

(Photo courtesy of John McCain 2008)

No one on the governing board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had the courage to tell it like it is to the warring factions that showed up Thursday to push their pet transit projects.

The message to the people who want to extend the Gold Line to mars, via Ontario airport, would have gone something like this:

“We’re afraid of you. Your backers in Congress have juice and are 1,000 percent behind you. They’ll leapfrog your lame-ass, low ridership project over the much more greatly needed Expo Line to Santa Monica. They might even steal money from the divine Subway to the Sea.”

You can tell it's going to be The Silly Season in Los Angeles, from now to November, when Antonio Villaraigosa, whose growth-at-any-cost development beliefs have added tens of thousands of crowded new apartments to this overbuilt city, blames L.A.'s attention-getting traffic on the War in Iraq.

Yep. He actually told Steve Hymon, that highly readable guy over at the L.A. Times, that voters need to approve a big, fat sales tax increase in November to build more mass transit, particularly since the White House isn't investing in infrastructure because "we're a nation at war."

The mayor's dissembling and buck-passing was bizarre for two reasons.

On June 25, this blog reported on a mass email sent around the city by Robert Weiss calling for a boycott of the Ahmanson Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum and the Kirk Douglas Theatre, until Center Theatre Group, which administers the three theaters, makes a policy statement vigorously opposing the contribution of $400,000 by Ahmanson Theatre benefactor Howard Ahmanson to the organization sponsoring the anti-gay marriage amendment on the November ballot.

A multi-agency task force of 500 law enforcement officers swooped down on members of the Avenues gang on Drew Street early Wednesday morning. The crackdown netted 32 members or associates of the “Drew Street” clique of the Avenues.

The operation, which began at 4 a.m., stemmed from a massive 157-page federal racketeering indictment targeting 70 members of the gang who lived on Drew Street in northeast Los Angeles. Federal and local law enforcement officers served 25 federal search warrants, and picked up 32 Avenues gang members and associates in the pre-dawn raids. Twenty-six of the gang members who were indicted were already in local and federal custody including Maria “Chata” Leon who is reputed to be the matriarch of a large family of drug dealing gang members.

Maria "Chata" Leon

The indictment of Leon and her extended family for mostly drug related charges was a coup for local law enforcement officials who spent years trying to break up the control the family had over the Drew Street community.

The big neon sign at the Stonewall Inn is gone now, and the world famous gay bar has undergone a complete renovation. But it will always be the sacred ground where an angry bunch of drag queens and effeminate gay men pushed back after New York City police officers raided the place, and subsequently started the modern gay rights movement. The official date of the Stonewall Riots, according to a plaque outside the bar, is Friday, June 27, 1969.

At Seventh Avenue and Christopher Street, a few yards away from the Stonewall Inn, crowds tangled with police for several nights in late June, 1969.

I’d never tell Mayor V the real reason I jump at the chance to ride the rails with him. I want to be there when the Big One brings the Red Line to a halt, stranding the mayor and me hundreds of feet underground for days. Under those conditions, I’ll offer him a bottle of water from my emergency stash for every question he answers honestly and completely.

Under treacherous conditions for the whole truth Wednesday morning – the train kept moving – I did my best to help the mayor plot his political future and solve the city’s traffic horrors.

On the subway ride back downtown after the news conference at the North Hollywood station, where he sat in the driver’s seat and honked the horn on one of the new RapidBus Lines, I chided Mayor V for giving his usual, flippant, I-love-my-job response to a radio reporter who had asked if is running for governor in 2010.

“But I really do love my job.”

A multi-agency task force of 500 law enforcement officers swooped down on members of the avenues gang on Drew Street yesterday morning. The crackdown netted 32 members or associates of the “Drew Street” clique of the avenues.

The operation, which began at 4 a.m., stemmed from a massive 157-page federal racketeering indictment targeting 70 members of the gang who lived on Drew Street in northeast Los Angeles. Federal and local law enforcement officers served 25 federal search warrants, and picked up 32 avenues gang members and associates in the pre-dawn raid. Twenty-six of the gang members who were indicted were already in local and federal custody including Maria “Chatta” Leon who is reputed to be the matriarch of a large family of drug-dealing gang members.

Her son, Francisco “Pancho” Real, the leader of the gang and the lead defendant in the indictment, was arrested along with some of his brothers. According to prosecutors, Mexican Mafia members authorized Francisco Real to take control of the area last summer.

Despite the massive sweep, more than a dozen gang members remain at large. They include:

Jose "Minor" Alvarado

A multi-agency task force of 500 law enforcement officers swooped down on members of the avenues gang on Drew Street early this morning. The crackdown netted 32 members or associates of the “Drew Street” clique of the avenues.

The operation, which began at 4 a.m., stemmed from a massive 157-page federal racketeering indictment targeting 70 members of the gang who lived on Drew Street in northeast Los Angeles. Federal and local law enforcement officers served 25 federal search warrants, and picked up 32 avenues gang members and associates in the pre-dawn raids. Twenty-six of the gang members who were indicted were already in local and federal custody including Maria “Chatta” Leon who is reputed to be the matriarch of a large family of drug-dealing gang members.

Her son, Francisco “Pancho” Real, the leader of the gang and the lead defendant in the indictment, was arrested along with some of his brothers. According to prosecutors, Mexican Mafia members authorized Francisco Real to take control of the area last summer.

Guns confiscated during the raid

Amidst waves of student, faculty and alumni protests over soaring tuition rates and alleged capital mismanagement, trustees of the Art Center College of Design announced yesterday that Richard Koshalek's contract as president won't be renewed when it terminates at the end of next year. The move was a bit of a shock, as many on campus figured Koshalek was a lock to remain at Art Center and continue his plans to build a $50 million Frank Gehry designed library and research center.

Koshalek was the primary advocate of the building, and with his departure from the college eminent, the future of the DRC, as the building was to be called, remains unclear. In an online statement posted on Art Center's website, Chairman of the Board of Trustees John Puerner said that "the DRC, [is] now being reevaluated and reprioritized by the facilities and finance committees of the Board."

The Mayor's office is denying to the Weekly reports on other local
websites that he has a long-concealed tattoo reading “Born To Raise Hell.” Antonio got slammed on Tuesday by the Mayor Sam blog over a controversy boiling up in the Los Angeles Fire Department, first reported right here, in which firefighters are being ordered to wear long sleeves or even bandages to cover their tattoos.

After the Daily News wrote about the controversy on Tuesday, Mayor Sam went to town slamming the LAFD’s “no show” tattoo policy, then wrote:

"And it's amazing to consider, when we have a mayor who reportedly never is seen without his shirt off nor wearing short sleeves because he sports gang tattoos from his youth."

Gang tattoos? If only! The allegation stems from a website called Bruin Alumni Association, which insists the mayor got his tattoo while a radical student at UCLA.

Robert Weiss was outraged upon reading Tim Rutten's Op-Ed in the L.A. Times that Howard Ahmanson had contributed $400 million to California Protect Marriage – the organization sponsoring the State ballot initiative on the November ballot that will attempt to reverse the California Supreme Court's recent ruling giving legal sanction to same-sex marriages across the state.

Former Beverly Hills matchmaker Virginia Graham told the LA Weekly that she has a date with CNN.

CNN contacted Graham after reading, Beverly Hills Matchmaker Spills About Manson Family Member Susan Atkins, she said. Graham’s upcoming interview will likely focus on her prison chat fest with Atkins who she shared a dorm room with at the Sybil Brand Institute for Women in the fall of 1969.

Atkins stabbed to death a pregnant Sharon Tate a gruesome 16 times at Tate’s Benedict Canyon mansion in the summer of 1969. Atkins told Graham that the 26-year-old actress begged for her life and the life of her unborn child.

“She told me this thing with great glee,” said Graham who was in jail for writing a bad check. “When I first saw her she was doing cartwheels up and down the aisle. She was in a total state of happiness. Truthfully I thought she was in for a drug bust.”

Before the party crowd showed up at 717 Olympic—the new luxury apartment high rise on Olympic Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles near Staples Center—Dan Glenn and Rob Bartusch walked over to the poolside bar and asked for a couple of stiff drinks. They were the swimsuit models for the evening, and Glenn, a handsome and muscular guy, was feeling somewhat self-conscious.

“I’m walking around a bunch of people I don’t know in a very tight swimsuit,” said Glenn, an actor who lives in Hollywood, “so, yeah, I’m a little nervous.”

Rob Bartusch, left, prepares to meet his audience with fellow model Dan Glenn.

Today's front page Daily News prominently features a Q and A with Tennie Pierce, the former firefighter who sued the city of Los Angeles over a prank in which he was fed dog food, conducted by the paper's award-winning reporter Beth Barrett.

Normally, Barrett is a great digger and reporter, very tough on her subjects, and many people think she should have won this weekend's Southern California Journalism Award for Hard News, which instead went to perfectly professional but not earth-shattering fire coverage by a huge team of Los Angeles Times reporters.

Barrett blew the lid off Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's affair with now-departed Telemundo anchor Mirthala Salinas. Some political analysts believe Barrett's scoop assured that Villaraigosa will not run for governor of California.

But Barrett's softball interview leaves out most of the key controversies swirling around Tennie Pierce, and some of those controversies helped discredit Pierce in the eyes of the public.

A week, almost to the hour, after the first gay couple legally wed in Los Angeles County, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will finally preside over a same sex marriage. American Beauty producer Bruce Cohen, who won an Oscar for the film, and New York art consultant Gabriel Catone will take their vows downtown at City Hall. Cohen and Villaraigosa had both been major supporters of former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

By the end of last week, the gays got married...even in San Diego County. But things turned a little weird for San Diego County Clerk Greg Smith, who was confronted with at least 14 employees who said same sex weddings and their religious beliefs did not mix. It was the first time gay marriage opponents successfully, and boldly, played the religion card at his office...and possibly anywhere else in the state.

Last Tuesday, at West Hollywood Park, gay couples made their own religious statements as they prepared to wed.

You can't rely on the official media to learn much of what's going on in Russia. The government owns all Russian TV stations, on which never is heard a discouraging word. Jon Stewart-style political satire has disappeared from the airwaves. Those pundits who dared to challenge government policy haven't been banned, because this is an open democratic society. For some inexplicable reason, they've simply all chosen to stay off the air. Call it a mystery of the East.

For real intel, you have to go street Blogs, i.e. cab drivers. The guy shuttling me this week from Sheremetyevo Airport to the northeast suburb of Ismailovsky Park said he didn't vote in the last presidential election on March 2, which put Vladimir Putin's young, appointed heir, Dmitry Medvedev, in the president's throne. The cabby said he didn't know anybody who bothered to vote.

It's stone fruit season!

Hollywood's Farmer's Market is huge, delicious, pretty easy to get to from many parts of town, and nicely scheduled for Sunday mornings.

Still plenty of this season's cherries left.

And after you've got your bags of fruit you can check in at Amoeba or join a protest in front of the CNN building.

Mr. Ha's apples. If you ever hear someone in LA really raving about how amazing an apple tastes, it's a good bet that they got it from his farm. Once I watched Mr. Ha hand feeding slices of different apples into Jake Gyllenhaal's mouth. It was, umm, strange.

More deliciousness after the jump.

After a recent L.A. Times story revealed that Judge Alex Kozinski maintained a bawdy Web site while he was presiding over a federal obscenity trial, law bloggers are still grappling with the ensuing scandal that forced Kozinski to recuse himself from U.S. v. Isaacs. The legal eagles have reduced to handy parables the actions of disgruntled lawyer Cyrus Sanai, who tipped off the Times in order to bring down Kozinski, and the debate over whether or not the judge had a reasonable expectation of privacy when his site could be accessed by the public. Some of the more vivid analogies appear below. They do not compare Kozinski or Sanai to a summer’s day.

It looks like Councilmember Jack Weiss’ plan to impose hefty fines on companies that post multi-story “supergraphics” signs plastered illegally around Los Angeles is kaput – for now. A federal court judge made sure of that.

Last April, Weiss held a press conference across the street from a Gap Inc. “supergraphics” with a blond model stretched across a 10-storey office building on West Pico Boulevard. Weiss called for the city to enforce a law already on the books that allowed the city to levy $2,500 fines, daily.

However, last week, a federal court judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking Los Angeles from prosecuting the Philadelphia-based company that posted the Gap sign. The court ruling essentially stops the city from any enforcement actions at the companies Pico Boulevard spot or at its 33 other locations until the company has a chance to challenge the city's outdoor advertising laws.

Only hours after a New York State judge tossed his defamation lawsuit against Beverly Hills Billionaire Ron Burkle and Bill and Hillary Clinton, former New York Post reporter Jared Paul Stern wrote to LA Weekly in an email, "We will file an immediate appeal. The judge's opinion was biased and disgraceful."

The LA Weekly recently nabbed the gory details of Susan Atkin’s last parole hearing on June 1, 2005 at the California Institution for Women in Corona. It turns out that the 250-page report is a blood-curdling reminder of the carnage that occurred in the summer of 1969 when Atkins, then 22, stabbed to death a pregnant Sharon Tate a gruesome 16 times at Tate’s Benedict Canyon mansion.

After killing Tate, prosecutors said Atkins tasted the actress' blood and used it to scrawl “PIG” on her front door. On that dreadful night, the Manson Family also killed Abigail Ann Folger, Voytek Frykowski, Steven R. Parent, and Jay Sebring. The following day, on August 10, members of the Manson family bludgeoned to death Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary at their home in the Los Feliz hills.

During the 2005 parole hearing, a panel of prison commissioners asked Atkins a variety of questions concerning her family relationships, work history, social skills in prison, and plans if paroled.

At West Hollywood Park, across the street from the Pacific Design Center, Mayor Jeff Prang stood underneath the shade of a palm tree in a navy blue suit with a gold-and-blue striped tie. He had been talking to journalists from all over the world and needed to take a breather before the press conference at eight-thirty in the morning. Prang had only been mayor since April, less than a month before the California Supreme Court ruling made same sex marriage legal.

"For me, it was a fortunate roll of the dice," he said. "This is a huge moment in the LGBT movement, so it's a humbling moment for me. The eyes of the world are upon us."

A few minutes later, Prang was cutting a ribbon with the rest of the West Hollywood City Council, welcoming hundreds of couples to the same city that passed the first domestic partnership law in the nation. This time, the gays were getting married.

(Mayor Jeff Prang, far right, held a pair of big scissors as photographers snapped away.)

On the front steps of the Beverly Hills Courthouse, Robin Tyler and Diane Olson became the first gay couple to marry in Los Angeles County, and possibly all of California. Tyler and Olson were the leading plaintiffs in the 2004 same sex marriage lawsuit that went before the California Supreme Court, with the majority of justices ruling in their favor on May 15. On late Monday afternoon, it was time to make everything official.

(Robin Tyler (left), Diane Olson, and lawyer Gloria Allred)

In the summer of 1969, Susan Atkins stabbed to death a pregnant Sharon Tate a gruesome 16 times at Tate’s Benedict Canyon mansion. Later, Atkins told fellow inmate and Beverly Hills matchmaker Virginia Graham that the 26-year-old actress begged for her life and the life of her unborn child.

“She told me this thing with great glee,” said Graham who shared a dorm room with Atkins at the Sybil Brand Institute for Women in the fall of 1969. After killing Tate, prosecutors said Atkins tasted the actress' blood and used it to scrawl “PIG” on her front door. On that dreadful night, the Manson Family also killed Abigail Ann Folger, Voytek Frykowski, Steven R. Parent, and Jay Sebring.

The following day, on August 10, members of the Manson family – excluding Atkins – bludgeoned to death Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary at their home in the Los Feliz hills. Atkins, then 22, was convicted of killing Tate and music teacher Gary Hinman. Charles Manson, Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten were soon charged with the other grisly murders.

Susan Atkins in 2001

Manson had preached of an apocalyptic race war he said was predicted in the Beatles song “Helter Skelter.” His followers including Atkins believed they would eventually control the United States — if they performed heinous crimes for Manson.

Almost 40 years later, Atkins, now 59, is asking for “compassionate release.” Atkins, who is dying from brain cancer, is serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole, making her eligible for release.

Graham, who later became a key witness in the prosecution's case against Atkins, told the LA Weekly in a recent interview that she remembered Atkins as a “young silly ass teenager” who felt no remorse for the brutal attack on Tate.

Although July approaches, it’s still not too late for a first-time criminal defendant to make her spring debut in federal court.

Media Village of the Damned: Press waiting for Lori Drew

I thought Stan Winston was older, if only because his movie monsters have had me squirming in my seat for almost thirty years. Yet, he was only 62, and had been fighting multiple myeloma for seven years, according to the LA Times. Stan Winston died Sunday evening at his Malibu home.

There will be plenty of heartfelt tributes to the man to come in the next few days, but for those of you who might not understand his influence and importance, here are a few of my favorite Stan Winston movie moments:

The Thing, directed by John Carpenter, 1982

(Rob Bottin was the primary effects artist for The Thing, but Winston also worked on the movie)

Heartbeeps, directed by Allan Arkush, starring Andy Kaufman, 1982

Monster Squad, directed by Fred Dekker, 1987

According to film news site Ain't It Cool, Stan Winston's crew sculpted the werewolf in Monster Squad to look exactly like Stan Winston.

The Universal Studios fire that gutted a mechanical King Kong and the Town Square seen in “Back to the Future” was not exacerbated by a lack of waterpower, according to a report released by the Los Angeles County Fire Department and the county Department of Public Works on June 13. The 45-page report blamed the highly flammable materials and tightly packed set facades and warehouses for aggravating the June 1 fire.

Also, water sprinklers that were added after a 1990 blaze failed, said Los Angeles County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman at a 5 p.m. press conference last Friday at Los Angeles County Fire Department headquarters.

Three employees repairing a roof on one of Universal Studios backlots accidentally caused the inferno that destroyed 3.5 acres.

"Ring them bells St. Catherine/ From the top of the room,
Ring them from the fortress/ For the lilies that bloom.
Oh the lines are long/ And the fighting is strong
And they're breaking down the distance/ Between right and wrong."
"Ring Them Bells," Bob Dylan

Gay marriage is a reality in California this coming week, and it has apparently made a whole bunch of queer lawyers and activists nervous. Boutique hotel owners, tuxedo rental shop managers, and any other proud capitalist who cater to the wedding crowd are absolutely giddy, however. Another California Gold Rush of sorts is on.