Wednesday rain update

Storm rain total, noon-ish update: 2-13/16 inches (with more expected, of course.)

What happens when your mail carrier goes on vacation

Just some of the mis-delivered mail

hand-sorted by my neighbors last weekend.

MB here...

Last Monday I was pleased and surprised to find the daily "Food 4 Less" circular missing from my mailbox. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that pretty much all my mail was missing from my mailbox. A few days later a client called to ask for my new address, as the check they had sent me had been returned bearing a yellow "NIXIE" sticker reading "Return to sender - attempted - not known - unable to forward". Yes, somehow, my little mailbox which had happily accepted mail for me for close to two years suddenly is refusing to accept checks. To protect me from the corrupting influence of teh filthy lucre, no doubt.

Calling the USPS 800 number yielded nothing but a promise that someone "who can handle this" would return my call within two business days.

So I lurked around the mailroom at the appointed time to harangue the mail carrier. "I don't know, I'm just a sub. You have to talk to your regular carrier. She's on vacation." I told her about the "NIXIE" sticker on my envelope. "Oh, you have a sticker? That's because you moved away and gave a forwarding address." No, no, I still live here. See? It's me, standing before you, and I'm still here. Is there someone I should talk to at the Post Office, other than just the 800 number? "No, the supervisor won't know, none of the carriers will know, no one will know anything. Your regular carrier will be back Monday. You will have to ask her." Got that? Your letter carrier goes on vacation, she takes all knowledge and accountability with her.

Now, I would think that magically disappearing and reappearing mailboxes would raise alarms in the computerized systems rather than print yellow stickers, but that is just me. I would think reliability is paramount in a mail system. Hell, I would even go so far as to think that a system as large and experienced as the USPS would have some backup systems to catch and work around the fuckwittery of a substitute mail carrier who can't find a mailbox that's only clearly marked and numbered and placed in order among all the other clearly numbered mailboxes.

Email has stolen a lot of business from the USPS, but the Post Office still plays a critical role in delivering physical things such as checks, legal papers, etc. There has been talk of dropping Saturday delivery as a way to make up for sagging sales, and I'm all for it -- if the savings are applied to increasing the reliability of the system and removing opportunities for one person to fuck up the chain of delivery all by themselves.

I would ask my regular carrier about this Monday, as the sub carrier had suggested, but their is no delivery on MLK day.

Happy new year!

Although us mommy-and-daddy types were in bed soon after the ball fell in Times Square, the younger set in our building were partying 'till oh-five-hundred, god bless 'em.

So from our little family to you and yours, here's wishing for a joy filled 2010!

Spotted on Spring Street

I don't know why. But there it is.

Downtown grows up!

MB here,

Those of you who regularly read our little blog (and we thank you for your attention!) have probably noticed by now that we just haven't been posting that much. Sure, there's the occasional rant about noise or street corner comedians or whatnot, but we aren't writing as much about our life downtown as we used to.

I wondered why, myself. We aren't tired of writing, or bored of the blog, or blogging in general. It is, I think, that this was conceived as a blog about our adventures of moving downtown with a child, and that part of our life is no longer interesting, and I mean interesting in the sense of that old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times!"

When we started this blog, it was an exciting event to hear of a new shop or eatery opening, and trying to minimize our car trips outside the 'hood was something of a puzzle. Now, we have burgers and groceries across the street, ice cream and waffles around the corner, several choices for Breakfast and I either walk to Ralphs and complain about the prices or bite the bullet and drive to the newley remodled Vons on glendale (or better yet, Gold Line to Trader Joes!) The Downtown Parents Group is going great, the play dates and get togethers are crowded and I spot pregnant hipsters scooting in and out of the loft buildings most every weekend. Hell, H'wood is even setting rom-coms down here in dreamy dreamy DTLA (still waiting for the "300 days of summer" mash-up.)

So what does this mean? We are more comfortable here. And as our comfort grows, the prod of discomfort that pushes us to post dulls somewhat and becomes, how can I say it? Less Pokey.

This is not a "sorry I havn't updated my blog" post, or a good-bye of any sort. It's a recognition that Downtown, or more correctly our relationship to Downtown, has turned a corner. I'm posting to recognise that, to mark the moment, as it were.

And now it's time to get on with it. My next post may or may not be directly Downtown related. Perhaps I'll expand the area of interest of this blog beyond just navel-gazing in the City. Oh, who am I kidding? It will be about Awesome Coffee available right around the corner.

--MB

Beep beep BEEP

MB here...

It's noisy downtown. The general noise and hubub of the city doesn't bother me. Our loft doesn't face the street, we face a "light court". The building is U-shaped, and we have a nice little patio on one leg of the U, high enough to overlook the open air above the "arcade" portion of the Mercantile Arcade building. I have a nice view of the California Plaza buildings, and overall, it's pretty quiet back there. What noise there is is of the background variety. Traffic, laughing neighbors, etc.

The Arcade building consists of two 12-story towers, one facing Broadway just north of 6th street, and one fracing Spring street. Connecting the two towers is a walkable arcade filled with shops, so you can walk from Spring st. straight through the building to Broadway. It's been sitting empty above the ground floor ever since we moved in, but recently there has been an explosion of activity. Apparently the owners have overcome whatever obstacle has been in the road, and the conversion of the building to lofts is back on track.

The construction hasn't been loud or annoying at all. What has been annoying is the alarms. Occasionally, an alarm would go off in the building. Either a whoop-whoop alternating with a prerecorded voice instructing all within earshot to stop work and make for the exits, or an exceptionally annoying electronic beep. Beep beep beep. Three loud electronic tones emitting from the upper floors or roof of the broadway-side tower. Oddly enough, you really can't here the alarm from the floor of the arcade, but you can hear it from the parking lot north of the building on Spring, and you sure as hell can hear it in my loft.

For a while the alarm had been going off at odd times and running for anywhere from half an hour to a few hours before shutting off. But a week ago monday the alarm started beeping at noon and didn't quit until 10:00 PM. Really annoying.

Beep beep beep.

The following Wednesday, it went off again around Noon. Beep beep beep. I went next door and wandered around until I spotted some guys with "fire control" on their shirts. They really couldn't say anything about it, but they went and fetched a well-dressed young-ish dark haired guy they identified as their "big boss". "We are doing occasional tests, but it shouldnt' be going off on weekends" he told me. "It's going off now" I replied. "Now?" "Yes, Now." "Um, ok..." He got on the phone, and got the alarm shut off, but it was clear he had no idea it was running at all.

Beep beep beep.

Of course the beeps where back the very next day, at 10:00 AM. I had no idea how to contact anyone over there... I had neglected to get a number for the Fire Control guy, and there is no "In case of emergency" or "Managed by..." numbers on the building itself. There's probably some easy and simple way to get emergency contact info for any building downtown, but I don't know it. The building permits I retrieved from the Dept. of Building and Safety's web site gave the contractor as "Santa Fe Construction Co Inc; Lic. No.: 871003", with an address that Google showed to be a single family home in Winnetka. The contractor's phone #, (818) 326-3533, was a cell phone the no one picked up. The listed "Responsible Managing Officer (RMO)" for Santa Fe is Gregory Martin, and some googling of that name found that Greg Martin is the owner of the Arcade building, or a VP of the developer, "Fifth Street Funding", or perhaps the elusive avatar of a trio of front companies holding real estate on behalf of a wealthy and mysterious Australian family. Whatever. Calling Fifth Street Funding led me to Lucia Parisi, the manager of the Arcade Building.

Beep beep beep.

Lucia was able to get the alarm shut off in short order, once I convinced her that this wasn't just "testing", and that it was in fact running continuously. And the alarm pretty much stayed off, 'till today.

Beep beep beep.

The alarm is running when I get home today at 1:30PM.

Beep beep beep.

I call Lucia at 2, she's not in.

Beep beep beep.

I call Lucia an hour later, she's in but in a meeting.

Beep beep beep.

I convince the receptionist to break into the meeting, but Lucia "is aware of the situation and will take care of it ASAP"

Beep beep beep.

I call again at 4:30, everyone is gone for the day.

BEEP BEEP BEEP!

Listen developer people. I am your neighbor. I live here. I get to watch the comings and goings of your little construction project. And I'm not going away. Do you really want me to be the pissed off neighbor who spends his time filing complaints and taking photos and raising "issues" with the city and county, the police and the BID? Organizing the community? Showing up at every hearing to voice my concerns? Filing complaints with the LAPD Noise Enforcement Team? LA Building and safety? Of course not. And I don't want to be that guy. So shut off your goddamned alarm and pick up the phone when it rings. ok?

NY Magazine Profiles Bratton

Just wanted to share: New York Magazine profiles former LA police chief William Bratton.

In the debate over whether policing is an art or a science, Bratton is a firm believer that it’s a science. His successes, he says, were attributable to two basic policing strategies: CompStat and “broken windows.” The former is the system Bratton and his NYPD deputy commissioner, the late Jack Maple, developed in 1994 that introduced computer analysis of crime patterns and strict accountability measures to modern policing. The latter is the theory first articulated by the academics George Kelling and James Q. Wilson in 1982, and later put into practice by Bratton with New York’s transit cops and then with the NYPD, that by cracking down on minor quality-of-life crimes—graffiti, fare-hopping, breaking windows—police can reduce serious crime as well. “There’s nothing going on in Los Angeles that’s different from what I did in New York,” Bratton says. “I have CompStat and I have very assertive cops making a lot of arrests.”

And yet it was Bratton’s willingness to adapt these strategies to two very different environments that accounts for his successes. In other words, he was as much of an artist as he was a scientist. One crucial adjustment was patience. In New York City, Bratton had commanded 38,000 cops and was able to flood multiple high-crime areas simultaneously with hundreds of officers. In Los Angeles, he had only 9,000 cops. “Throwing 50 cops at a problem in Los Angeles was really difficult,” says Kelling, a consultant to the LAPD during Bratton’s tenure. “It meant he couldn’t do everything at once.” So, while Bratton cracked down immediately on prostitution in Hollywood, cleaning up the city’s notorious skid row had to wait. “This was much more of a patient, unfolding enterprise,” says John Linder, a consultant who worked with Bratton in New York and Los Angeles. “He was not as worried about the immediate impact as he was in New York.”

More here.