pandajames59-blog

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Shipping Container Housing Development Breaks Ground in Westlake

Aedis Real Estate Group and the Foundation for Affordable Housing have broken ground on a new development in the Westlake District.

The Hope on Alvarado Street, located at 166 N. Alvarado Street, will consist of a five-story structure containing 84 studio and one-bedroom apartments, as well as space for on-site social services and a small parking garage.  The apartments are to be priced for persons making 60 percent or less than the area median income, with rents set between $788 and $1,014 per month.

Designed by KTGY Architecture + Planning, the project is to be constructed out of shipping containers.  The metal structures will be arranged to create an internal courtyard on the building's second floor, while its ground level will be activated with amenity spaces.

The $27-million development's construction timeline has previously been estimated at six months, with an accelerated schedule due to the use of shipping containers.

A similar affordable development to be built with shipping containers is planned near the Crenshaw/LAX Line in Hyde Park.

Hope on Alvarado Archive (Urbanize LA)

Source: https://urbanize.la/post/shipping-container-housing-development-breaks-ground-westlake

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Curry carries Warriors over Cavs, Thunder roar back

Los Angeles (AFP) - Stephen Curry scored 42 points to lead the Golden State Warriors to a 129-105 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday in an NBA Finals rematch in name only.

Curry drained nine three-pointers and Kevin Durant added 25 points on nine of 16 shooting as the Warriors pulled away in the second half against a Cleveland team that bears little resemblance to the LeBron James-led Cavs that battled the Warriors in the last four championship series.

Curry, looking fully recovered in his third game back from a groin injury that sidelined him for 11 games, added nine rebounds and seven assists. Durant pulled down 10 rebounds and handed out nine assists.

The Warriors were back in Cleveland for the first time since June, when they beat the Cavs to win their second straight NBA title and third in four years.

Since then the Cavs have seen James depart as a free agent to the Los Angeles Lakers. Forward J.R. Smith was also absent from the team, Kevin Love was nursing a foot injury and Kyle Korver was recently traded to Utah.

Tristan Thompson, one of the only holdovers from the Cavaliers teams that challenged the Warriors -- and beat them for the crown in 2016 -- scored 14 points with 19 rebounds.

Rookie Collin Sexton led the Cavaliers with 21 points.

"It just felt quiet, from what we're used to," Warriors coach Steve Kerr said of the atmosphere in Cleveland. "For obvious reasons -- it's not the same out there."

Despite Curry's 25 first-half points, Cleveland led at the break, closing the half on a 19-5 scoring run.

"I thought they competed really hard," Kerr said of the Cavaliers. "First half, they knocked down shots, they controlled the whole half. Our talent took over in the second half."

The Warriors improved to 17-9 -- still fourth in a Western Conference led by the Denver Nuggets, who edged the Orlando Magic 124-118 in overtime for a seventh straight victory that pushed their record to 17-7.

- 'Special night' -

They finished the night half a game in front of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who erased a 23-point deficit with less than five minutes to play to beat the Brooklyn Nets 114-112.

"This is a special night," said Thunder forward Paul George, who scored 25 of his 47 points in the fourth quarter. "We came together when we were down -- our backs against the wall. We showed who we are tonight."

George drained the game-winning three-pointer with three-seconds remaining, taking a feed from Russell Westbrook who drew two defenders then passed to George on the perimeter.

Westbrook finished with 21 points, 17 assists and 15 rebounds, his 108th career triple-double moving him past Jason Kidd for third place on the NBA's all-time list.

Only Oscar Robertson with 181 and Magic Johnson with 138 have achieved more triple-doubles -- reaching double digits in three key statistical categories.

The Los Angeles Clippers, who came into the night tied for the lead in the West, fell a game behind the Nuggets with a 96-86 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies.

Memphis avenged their overtime loss to the Clippers less than two weeks ago, holding Los Angeles to their lowest points total of the season.

Center Joakim Noah, signed by the Grizzlies on Tuesday, made his first NBA appearance in 11 months, scoring four points in 13 minutes on the floor.

In Los Angeles, LeBron James scored 20 of his 42 points in the fourth quarter as the Lakers beat the San Antonio Spurs 121-113.

In Toronto, Kawhi Leonard scored 36 points and Jonas Valanciunas added 18 of his 26 in the fourth quarter as the Raptors defeated the Philadelphia 76ers 113-102.

The Raptors rebounded from a loss to Denver on Monday to improve their league-leading record to 21-5.

Leonard connected on 13 of 24 shots from the field, including five of six from three-point range as the Raptors withstood a 38-point performance from Philadelphia's Jimmy Butler.

Source: https://sports.yahoo.com/curry-carries-warriors-over-cavs-thunder-roar-back-041856890--nba.html?src=rss

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LeBron James is only getting older. Lakers need to upgrade their roster now

“I know you know how serious he is about his rehab,” coach Luke Walton said Monday night. “So he’s doing everything possible and we’ve talked. I know he’s dying to get back on the basketball court, but he also knows that getting healthy is the top priority. So whenever that day comes, he’ll be back out there.”

Source: https://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-lakers-hernandez-20190122-story.html

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Lakers sacan su mejor versión defensiva al vencer a Dallas

LOS ÁNGELES – A veces, una jugada vale más que mil palabras.

El partido de los Lakers ante Dallas Mavericks del viernes por la noche tuvo una secuencia en particular que sirve para ilustrar el infinito potencial del equipo de Luke Walton.

Los protagonistas la analizaron – así como su significado a nivel macro – y aquí también la repasaremos, pero lo mejor es verla, de punta a punta, para comprender hasta adonde puede llegar este plantel.

Con Dallas lanzado al contragolpe y los Lakers retrocediendo, Kyle Kuzma frena la primera opción, que iba a ser una penetración al canasto por parte de Dennis Smith Jr. Luego, Lonzo Ball se le planta uno contra uno a Luka Doncic, obligando al esloveno a tener que utilizar la cortina de DeAndre Jordan para poder dejar al ex UCLA en el camino. Sin embargo, el europeo termina encontrándose con JaVale McGee, quien se estira lo suficiente como para generar el fallo del armador visitante.

La defensa es buena, disciplinada y efectiva. La ofensiva, que inició ni bien LeBron James capturó el rebote, fue simple y llanamente una obra de arte.

En cuestión de cuatro segundos, y sin que el balón toque el suelo, los Lakers cruzaron el largo de la cancha. El pase largo de King James encontró a Ball a la carrera y este, suspendido en el aire, solo tuvo que redirigir el pase para un McGee que llegaba a todo vapor. Un paso, dos pasos, y martillazo.

“Él ya estaba adelantado a la jugada”, dijo James sobre Ball. “Estaba adelantado a la jugada, y ya había visto a JaVale corriendo antes que yo le lanzara la bola. Esas son cosas que no se pueden enseñar”.

Walton, sin mostrarse sorprendido, trató de poner la secuencia en contexto.

“Muestra el tipo de generadores de juego que tenemos cuando estamos en nuestra mejor (versión)”, explicó. “Es un pase de salida rápido, es nuestro pivot corriendo por delante de otros ocho jugadores en la cancha, y Lonzo dando un pase generoso al interno que viene corriendo por la llave. Esos somos nosotros cuando estamos en nuestra mejor (versión). Tenemos que continuar trabajando en estar en nuestra mejor (versión) lo más consistentemente posible”.

Esa jugada llegó en medio del vendaval de los Lakers en el segundo cuarto. Los laguneros llegaron a perder 45-30, pero el regreso de James a la cancha (tras una ausencia prolongada por tener dos faltas) le dio una inyección de adrenalina al equipo que los impulsó durante el resto de la noche en ambos costados.

King James acabaría liderando al equipo con 28 puntos, pero quizás como nunca antes en la temporada, el elenco completo brilló con luz propia.

Todo comenzó con Ball, quien confirmó lo que venía insinuando desde hace ya varios juegos. El base dio una clase de cómo jugar defensa en la NBA, interrumpiendo líneas de pase, peleando efectivamente en las cortinas, y estando siempre bien parado. Y una vez que el equipo comenzó a correr, el oriundo de Chino Hills estuvo en su salsa.

Esta jugada, muy parecida a la mencionada en esta nota, lo tuvo como conductor, con McGee dando el último pase y Brandon Ingram definiendo:

Ball terminaría la noche con cinco robos (a uno de la mejor marca de su carrera). A eso le sumó suficiente ofensiva (10 puntos) y generación de juego (cuatro asistencias) como para asegurarse que sus 28 minutos en cancha alcanzaran para dejar su huella en el partido.

Ingram y Kuzma también tuvieron actuaciones defensivas sobresalientes, y lo de Tyson Chandler, aparte de sus 13 puntos y 12 rebotes, fue soberbio.

Los Lakers dejaron a Dallas en un 39.5 por ciento en tiros de cancha, y los visitantes apenas consiguieron 45 puntos tras el entretiempo.

Doncic, candidato firme al premio al Novato del Año, disparó de 2/13 en tiros de cancha – nuevamente asfixiado por los tentáculos de Ingram.

De no ser por las 29 faltas cometidas (34 tiros libres de los Mavericks) y las 18 pérdidas propias, el encuentro se hubiera definido mucho antes.

Y es que cuando los Lakers defienden de esa forma, con esa mezcla de ganas y ejecución, los rivales se van quedando rápidamente sin respuestas.

“Hemos progresado mucho”, aseguró Walton. “Somos más consistentes, entendemos mejor las coberturas, estamos empezando a entender mejor a los compañeros, la terminología, todo. Por eso decimos siempre, ‘toma tiempo, toma tiempo’. También requiere jugadores que están comprometidos y dispuestos, porque mucho de la defensa es esfuerzo. Tenemos a un grupo de jugadores que se ha comprometido en ese lado de la cancha, y que sigue trabajando. Les mostramos videos y son participantes activos en eso. Quieren ser un equipo Top 10 defensivo, y trabajamos sobre eso y por eso siguen mejorando”.

Source: https://www.nba.com/lakers/news/espanol/181130defensiva

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Red Sox-Dodgers World Series averages 14.1 million viewers - ESPN

NEW YORK -- Boston's five-game World Series victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers averaged 14,125,000 viewers on Fox, down 25 percent from last year and the fourth-lowest ever.

The Series featuring a pair of large-market teams averaged an 8.3 rating and 17 share, Nielsen said Tuesday. That was down from a 10.7 rating, 20 share and 18,909,000 average viewers for the Houston Astros' seven-game win over the Dodgers last year. The Series viewership was down 40 percent from 23,386,000 average viewers for the Chicago Cubs' seven-game win over Cleveland two years ago -- Chicago's first title since 1908.

The only World Series with fewer average viewers were Philadelphia's five-game win over Tampa Bay in 2008 (13,062,000), San Francisco's four-game sweep of Detroit in 2012 (12.7 million) and the Giants' seven-game win over Kansas City in 2014 (13,825,000). The rating was the third-lowest, ahead of only a 7.6 in 2012 and an 8.2 in 2014.

Boston's 5-1 win in Game 5 on Sunday was the most-watched game of the Series, averaging 17,634,000 viewers. The opener averaged 13,800,000, followed by 13,507,000 in Game 2, 13,250,000 in Game 3 and 13,563,000 in Game 4.

Ratings represent the percentage of U.S. television households tuned into a program and shares represent the percentage watching a broadcast among homes with TVs in use at the time.

Source: http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/25130314/boston-red-sox-los-angeles-dodgers-world-series-ratings-down

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Metro directors question fairness of congestion pricing

Metro’s Board of Directors gently tapped the brakes Thursday on a proposal to explore a congestion pricing system in which drivers would be charged for using busy roads during peak traffic periods.

The board considered a report from agency staffers that recommended road pricing, along with a host of other financing measures that could be used to accelerate construction of 28 projects that Metro aims to complete in time for the 2028 Olympics.

But board members remained laser-focused on congestion pricing during two hours of discussion Thursday, and eventually voted to revisit the report next month.

That will give Metro staffers more time to address questions about the equity of a congestion pricing system, as drivers who can easily afford to pay tolls would be less affected than those who cannot.

“It seems punitive,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, arguing that LA’s transit infrastructure is not extensive enough to give all residents a meaningful alternative to driving.

At a Metro committee meeting last week, UCLA urban planning professor Michael Manville suggested that using revenue collected in a pricing system to assist low-income drivers would help address these concerns, but members of the board asked for more details Thursday.

“I am deeply concerned about how congestion pricing could be implemented in Los Angeles County,” wrote Supervisor Hilda Solis in a statement Thursday. “Before Metro moves further down this path, I feel it is critical to ensure that the benefits of congestion pricing are felt by all of our communities.”

The board approved a motion authored by Solis requesting that Metro develop an “equity strategy” and consult with academics, community groups, and local officials on ways to lessen impact on low-income drivers before crafting a congestion pricing policy.

“I drive the 110 almost every day,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn. “And for so many people on the 110, their car is their job—the landscapers, the pest control... it’s not a luxury for them to be driving.”

Some members of the board appeared more receptive to the idea of road pricing.

Board chair Sheila Kuehl pointed out that a transportation system in which many people feel compelled to drive comes with its own equity concerns.

“If we want to think about equity, we ought to consider the cost of driving,” Kuehl said. “It would be better for people’s budgets if they could have the option of public transit.”

Source: https://la.curbed.com/2019/1/24/18196121/congestion-pricing-los-angeles-metro-board

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Six-Story, 65-Unit Development Replaces Two Homes in Koreatown

Two single-family homes in Koreatown have been cleared away for the construction of a multifamily residential development.

The site, located at 719-723 S. St. Andrews Place, has been approved for the construction of a six-story, 65-unit apartment complex with basement parking.  Plans call for a mix of studio, one-, and two-bedroom dwellings with amenities such as a fitness center and a pool lounge according to the website of architecture firm Andmore Partners, which is designing the project.

Applicant Modern Development Expert, Inc. originally sought approvals for a base density development featuring 52 apartments, but later revised entitlements by tapping Transit Oriented Communities affordable housing incentives.  To obtain approvals for the larger project, a total of seven apartments are to be set priced for renters at the extremely low-income level.

Additional details regarding the project are unclear.

The project site is located a block west of a 160-unit development now being built by Jamison Services, Inc. near the intersection of 7th Street and Western Avenue.

Source: https://urbanize.la/post/six-story-65-unit-development-replaces-two-homes-koreatown

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Hot Property: An oceanfront score for Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban

The contemporary-style home is found within Montage, a resort community that overlooks the ocean. Built in 2010, the stone-finished house has a gated courtyard entry, high ceilings, mahogany finishes, six bedrooms and 7.75 bathrooms. There are bi-folding walls of glass in the common areas for indoor-outdoor living and entertaining.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hp-hotprop-20190105-story.html

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A Complete Guide to LACMA's First Piece of Architecture, the Most Spectacular House in Los Angeles

i haven’t had an architecture update for a while…i know.  i’m sorry.

but this really caught my interest. LACMA bought the sheats-goldstein house, and now, in theory, we can all go there and look around and re-enact brian de palma movies.

ok, more architecture updates to follow. i promise.

moby

Source: http://mobylosangelesarchitecture.com/post/139566273094/a-complete-guide-to-lacmas-first-piece-of

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Cynical Satire and Civic Optimism Across the American Heartland

NOVEMBER 19, 2018

THE ONLY TIME I’ve ridden on a Greyhound bus was in 2012, en route to New Hampshire to watch the primaries unfold. The trip itself was uneventful, and in electoral time it feels as if it happened eons ago. I may believe you if you tell me that the Republicans’ choice of Mitt Romney as their presidential nominee occurred in an age before air travel. I may even agree to take buses exclusively from now on if it means there will be a saner politics waiting at the end of the road.

Gary Shteyngart’s Lake Success is a novel centered on Americans’ nostalgia for the Greyhound bus. But it’s also a novel that skewers us for that nostalgia. Long-haul bus rides may seem the perfect vehicle for post-partisan populism. The Greyhound, we may imagine, combines beatnik fantasies with Middle America geography as it transports those too poor to buy a plane ticket and too down on their luck to be politically correct. But anyone who gets aboard the Greyhound to live out a sociological experiment rather than to simply secure an affordable ride from point A to point B is probably carrying some baggage of his own. This is certainly the case with Barry Cohen in Lake Success.

Barry is a hedge-fund manager who, like Martin Shkreli, has gotten fantastically rich off of corrupt Big Pharma deals. He’s running from the law, though he doesn’t admit that’s what he’s up to. His more immediate reason for buying a bus ticket and tossing his black Amex card is that his wife, Seema, and his nanny have just gouged his face after a fight with the neighbors in their Central Park West penthouse. Neither Barry nor Seema is ready to confront the fact that no amount of money can buy off their son’s autism diagnosis. Instead Barry cursed out the neighbors for having the sort of “neurotypical” three-year-old who can perform all the verses of “I’m a Little Bumblebee” at a dinner party. Now he’s fleeing through Baltimore; Richmond, Virginia; Atlanta; and El Paso, Texas, on an impromptu search for his college girlfriend.

Shteyngart’s allusions are aggressive. While traveling, Barry contemplates writing about his journey in the style of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), “but in thoughtful middle-aged prose.” Instead of President Donald Trump’s “small hands,” Barry has small wrists, and he obsessively collects designer watches to compensate. Barry’s fund is named This Side of Capital, and after that fails, he starts another called Last Tycoon Capital. Lest we miss the references, Shteyngart reveals that F. Scott Fitzgerald is Barry’s favorite author.

At the same time, it’s easy to imagine a man of Barry’s narcissism making it clear that he graduated from Princeton University by cornering someone at a high-status party to tell tales of acquaintances who once performed with the Triangle Club. Barry realizes he can’t brag to the Greyhound passengers in quite the same way, but he finds other outlets for his ego-driven ambitions. He dreams up schemes for an “Urban Watch Fund” to teach kids the mechanics of Rolexes and turn the youth of Baltimore into “stakeholders.” He mulls launching a hedge fund in Mississippi (“Absalom Investments”) and posing under a magnolia tree for a photo op as part of a Wall Street Journal story.

As satire, Lake Success is brilliant, yet Shteyngart seems to be reaching for something more. The book plays out in two parts broken around Trump’s election. The first half, which begins with a drunken Barry stumbling into the Port Authority Bus Terminal “at the start of the First Summer of Trump,” is a more entertaining read. Barry encounters various strangers, such as the Baltimore drug dealer he thinks may make a decent business partner; the beautiful Marriott employee in Jackson, Mississippi, who becomes the first black woman he’s ever slept with; and Barry’s personal favorite, the “one-eyed Mexican man [who] fell asleep on my shoulder!” But they are merely props on Barry’s personal stage rather than people who offer real insight about life outside Manhattan. The travails of the Greyhound ride get tedious and, predictably, Barry’s marriage comes to an end.

The latter half of the book is then tinged with guilt that we could ever find a man like Barry funny. Shteyngart emphasizes that Barry and his fellow plutocrats are responsible for our present political mess and that no road trip through the heartland can assuage that. Not only is Barry not as funny as we’d hoped, he lacks the modicum of self-reflection needed to pull off a narrative arc. Narcissists make for lousy presidents and off-putting protagonists — 350 pages is a long time to spend with such self-centered New Yorkers.

Barry’s wife is a deeply conflicted woman who is well aware that she traded in her Yale Law degree to become a trophy wife. Seema contemplates joining the Hillary campaign or working part time at Planned Parenthood, yet she enjoys the ease of Barry’s wealth, if only because it pays for her daytime trysts with a semi-famous Guatemalan novelist at the Gramercy Park Hotel. But Shteyngart’s message is less about the contradictions of feminist one-percenters than about the sort of men they marry. It’s high-powered men, Shteyngart maintains, who can’t have it all. Barry wants to live as a rich Manhattanite who can nevertheless take solace in having once completed a creative-writing minor at Princeton. He wants us to know that, at bottom, he’s a sensitive guy who’s read some Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

In one of Shteyngart’s best scenes (perhaps inspired by his own experience teaching creative writing at Columbia University), young Barry tries to wow his college girlfriend with a story about a misunderstood banker who stumbles out of his Mercedes-Benz into a Vermont pasture to confess his mistakes to a beautiful shepherdess (i.e., his girlfriend). Barry’s professor is having none of it. About Barry and his Goldman Sachs–bound classmates, he says, “Even the volatility of their emotions is a financialized asset which can be traded between them at will.” This feedback is lost on Barry. What sends him reeling on his road trip these many years later is Seema’s accusation that he has “no imagination.” As Barry tirelessly reminds us, he strives to be a man with both “a vocation and an avocation.” But with the Feds on his tail for fraud and his wife unimpressed by his reading habits, Barry seems to have neither.

While Lake Success seethes with cynicism, Our Towns, by James and Deborah Fallows, is doggedly upbeat. And whereas Barry’s cross-country adventure ends in an expensive divorce, Our Towns is a travelogue co-authored by a husband and wife who alternate chapters. The book, now slated to become an HBO documentary, expands upon a series of articles and blog posts James wrote as a correspondent for The Atlantic. The couple makes a deliberate effort to see “flyover country” by way of their single-engine Cirrus SR22, and the many flights they record between 2012 and 2017 put a new spin on the Kerouac conceit: steering their small propeller plane toward out-of-the-way landing strips allows them to see much more of the country than would be accessible by car (or, for that matter, by bus).

So the Fallowses crisscross from Burlington, Vermont, to St. Marys, Georgia, from Guymon, Oklahoma, to Dodge City, Kansas. Some of their tales from the field are genuinely interesting: we learn why most credit card payments are processed in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and how engineers at Texas A&M University are mass-breeding a species of weevil that will eat up the invasive plant threatening Caddo Lake. But the book as a whole starts to read like a lengthy chamber of commerce brochure. The founder of the Ocean Renewable Power Company in Eastport, Maine, boasts that it’s the “Kitty Hawk of hydrokinetic power.” Holland, Michigan, is home to the world’s largest pickle-processing plant. The kids at Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science know how to construct 3-D printers. All the civic boosterism begins to run together.

The Fallowses are big fans of “public-private partnerships,” street art, and minor-league baseball teams — in other words, very visible signs of regional activity. They explain that, when they arrive in a new place, one of their first questions is, “Who makes this town go?” This method inevitably points them in the direction of mayors and local developers, and, naturally, these are the types most likely to emphasize sports stadiums, river walks, and the new magnet schools.

Attractive downtowns are all well and good, but it’s strange that the Fallowses don’t feature clergy, social workers, or nurses, who may have offered a more nuanced glimpse of daily life when citizens aren’t dining out by the waterfront. Surely there are success stories to be told about rehab centers or local parishes defying the national odds. Maybe these conversations would have been too moralistic or ambivalent for a book that is so relentlessly sunny.

Whereas Lake Success is saturated with Trump allusions, the Fallowses work hard in Our Towns to eschew national politics even as the 2016 election haunts their travels. James admits that Fox News is often blaring in the background but insists that Washington, DC, just doesn’t come up that often. Somehow, however, residents know about James’s career as a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter. How do they learn this unless the conversation occasionally veers toward Washington?

The Fallowses conclude that “[t]he more often national politics came into local discussions, the worse shape the town was likely to be in.” This is likely true, but the Fallowses hold so firm to this maxim that the reader gets the sense they’re afraid to broach both national politics and deep-seated local problems. James mentions that a nurse in Bend, Oregon, seems wary of giving him codeine for his flu because of the region’s opioid epidemic. But we’re left wondering what would have happened if James had followed up with her about how the city is faring with the crisis. Instead, the chapter pivots to a bullet-point list of all the opportunities available at Central Oregon Community College.

Likewise, when Deborah investigates rural healthcare in Ajo, Arizona, she gives a quick nod to drug- and depression-related issues and the challenges of operating a clinic so isolated that pregnant women can’t receive prenatal care. But then we receive a cheerful description of how gardens and farmers markets are answering nutrition needs in the desert. The story of Ajo ends with the Fallowses purchasing “jars of local citrus marmalade.”

In their preface, the Fallowses concede that two of the businesses they profile in Our Towns have since failed and that not all the places they visited are on the mend. We’re left to wonder which businesses these are and whether, in retrospect, the Fallowses see why they didn’t make it. Such reporting, however, would have required more skepticism toward their hosts’ sales pitches, an approach that clearly didn’t fit their book’s message of civic optimism.

So if the Fallowses come across too earnest and Shteyngart too stinging, what’s the contemporary writer to do? As puritanical as it sounds, some sincerity may help. In Lionel Trilling’s famous formulation, the rise of the novel coincided with the decline of sincerity as a serious moral virtue. At some point in the 18th century, Trilling suggests, the commitment to do and say what we mean — usually in conformity with religious principles — came to seem wooden and odd.

American sincerity probably lingered a little longer, given our rates of religiosity and the fact that we are so geographically dispersed. But there’s no question that plainspokenness gave way to an obsession with “authenticity.” The earlier strain of honesty had less to do with the individual: we spoke sincerely as a mark of faithfulness or, relatedly, to uphold the community’s virtue. Whatever primness was present at Plymouth Rock has long since yielded to romanticism, Freudianism, and the free-spirited urge to be true to oneself, not to some preening external authority. Authenticity remains a crucial part of the stories Americans tell themselves, but the self-conscious, self-centered strain of recent decades has flattered libertarians, hippies, Southerners, start-up executives, and, of course, wandering tourists.

Maybe, though, Americans are so angry because what they’ve been sold no longer seems authentic and they’ve lost the moral vocabulary to be sincere. In this absence of plainspokenness, Lake Success and Our Towns quest after what they want to be true. Barry tries to honor the love interests of his 19-year-old self, while the Fallowses look for the perfect microbrewery to fight urban blight. Yet they invite our suspicion: Barry doesn’t have an avocation, not all American towns are healthy, and our president isn’t a self-made man. We can only hope that, as citizens take to the streets, the authors who meet them there will truly tell it like it is.

¤

Danielle Charette is a PhD candidate with the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought. Her work has appeared in The Point, The Chronicle Review, The Hedgehog Review, and Tocqueville 21.

Source: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/cynical-satire-and-civic-optimism-across-the-american-heartland/

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South Bay Partners Plans 192-Unit Senior Community Near Century City

Rendering of the planned Bellwood complex in Century City

Developer South Bay Partners has announced plans for a senior living community near Century City. Plans filed with the city Dec. 6 call for 192 units. Of the units, 71 will be independent living, 75 will be assisted living and 46 will be memory care living.

The project, at 10330 Bellwood Ave. will also have 140 parking spaces, meeting spaces, upgraded sidewalks on Bellwood Avenue and an on-site wellness center that includes yoga and swimming. The Bellwood will also provide shuttles to grocery stores, doctor appointments and other outings.

The residents will be an average age of 83. Around 25 percent of the residents will be couples and 75 percent will be singles.

“West Los Angeles has a tremendous need for more quality and comprehensive senior housing,” said Steve Afriat, project spokesperson for the Bellwood, in a statement. “This neighborhood has one of the highest percentages of seniors in Los Angeles, meaning that this housing is desperately needed.”

The project is designed by Los Angeles-based Rios Clemente Hale Studios and Van Tilburg, Banvard & Soderbergh, which has an office in Santa Monica.

The project is expected to start construction in 2021 pending review by the city.

Commercial real estate reporter Hannah Madans can be reached at hmadans@labusinessjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @HannahMadans

Source: http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2018/dec/07/south-bay-partners-plans-192-unit-senior-community/

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Santa Monica scooter rider killed in hit-and-run

Police in Santa Monica are searching for a driver who fatally struck an electric scooter rider before fleeing the scene Friday.

The identity of the 41-year-old victim hasn’t yet been released, but police say that he was riding a personal scooter, rather than one of the dockless devices that have proliferated in the city since companies like Bird and Lime began depositing them on sidewalks there in 2017.

According to police, the victim fell off the scooter prior to the crash and was hit while recovering from the fall.

The driver, described as a six-foot-two white man in his 30s, reportedly stopped briefly and exited his vehicle before leaving the scene, on Third Street in Ocean Park. The victim died at a nearby hospital.

In the last two years, scooters—and their riders—have become a regular sight in Santa Monica, where the rentable scooters average three or four rides per day. The deadly collision Friday appears to be the first in the city involving an electric scooter.

A medical study released earlier this year found that emergency rooms at two hospitals in the Los Angeles area (including UCLA Medical Center Santa Monica) nearly 250 patients were treated for scooter-related injuries during a one-year period.

Most of the injuries were mild enough that patients were sent home after treatment, though two head injuries were severe enough that patients were taken to intensive care. Less than 10 percent of injuries were caused by a collision with a motor vehicle.

Deaths related to scooters have also been rare in the greater Los Angeles area, though the Santa Monica crash Friday wasn’t the only deadly incident in Southern California last week. In San Diego, 53-year-old Georgia resident Christopher Conti died after crashing into a tree while riding a Bird scooter.

Neither Conti or the victim of the Santa Monica hit-and-run were reportedly wearing helmets while riding—though as of January, California law no longer requires scooter riders to wear them.

Source: https://la.curbed.com/2019/3/19/18272739/scooter-death-santa-monica-hit-and-run

[pandajames59-blog]

Black Cat Sandwiches: Frightening Food From the 1940s

Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

The night of witches and hobgoblins is a beloved holiday to all children. Exciting masquerade dress, gleaming jack o’ lanterns, eerie black cats, laughter and traditional prankish games combine to make it the night of nights to have a party.

Fortune-telling games and bobbing for apples lead in popularity, but if you need other games for children too young for dancing, here are some ideas:

Black Cat Sandwiches

12 slices homogenized bread 2 packages pimiento cheese mayonnaise cooked prune halves

Method: Cut bread slices in circles. Blend cheese with enough mayonnaise to moisten for spreading. Spread on bread. Place a prune half, skin side up, on each circle. Cut rest of prune in small pieces for head, ears and tail of cat.

Another recipe for “Frightening Food From the 1940s.”

Bonus factoid: The Times reports that actress Gay Gibson vanished from her stateroom during a trip from South Africa to England in what is eventually named “The Port Hole Murder.” Ship steward James Camb is convicted of raping and killing Gibson, although her body was never found.

Quote of the day: “I’m the happiest girl in the world.” An unidentified young woman, a former aide to Aimee Semple McPherson working at the Marine Leprosarium in Louisiana, upon plans to marry a California man with active leprosy.

Source: https://ladailymirror.com/2018/10/27/black-cat-sandwiches-frightening-food-from-the-1940s/

[pandajames59-blog]

Homebuying start-up Perch raises $220M in new funding round

Homebuying start-up Perch raises $220M in new funding round

They are entered a crowded field of competitors like Opendoor and Zillow

Perch CEO Court Cunningham and homes in Texas (Credit: Perch and iStock)

If you want to sell your home with one click, more and more companies are competing for your business.

Perch, an iBuying start-up that buys and sells homes, has raised $20 million in equity and $200 million in debt in a new funding round to scale up its business.

“It is allowing us to add fuel to the fire,” said Court Cunningham, Perch’s CEO.

The latest funding round brings the company’s total equity raised to $51 million. FirstMark Capital led the Series B round, alongside Accomplice and Juxtapose.

The company focuses on “dual trackers,” people who are selling their homes in order to buy a new one. They can sell a property directly to Perch, who then offer a brokerage service to find them a new home.

Cunningham says the model makes home selling and buying simpler and easier. They currently charge a traditional 6 percent fee, but their online platform also includes notary and title services.

“All the players — Zillow, Redfin, Opendoor, Offerpad — are just solving the sell side of the equation,” Cunningham said, “What they’re not doing is solving the other side of the problem: Let me find your new house.”

Perch is headquartered in New York, but piloted its platform in Texas in early 2018, launching first in San Antonio and then expanding to Dallas. Cunningham said they plan to launch in Austin in the next few weeks and will expand to more markets in 2020.

“We think we can get to a 4 or 5 percent market share over the next few years,” Cunningham said.

Perch is set to compete with rival iBuyers such as Opendoor, which uses an algorithm to buy and sell homes. The company announced last month it had raised $300 million, bringing its valuation up to $3.8 billion. In the same month, another competitor, Offerpad, raised $975 million in equity and debt.

Companies like Zillow, Redfin and Keller Williams are also investing in the home flipping business. In a February earnings call, Zillow’s new CEO Rich Barton told investors the company was “formulating a new mission” by expanding its home-buying arm Zillow Offers.

Source: https://therealdeal.com/2019/04/02/homebuying-start-up-perch-raises-220m-in-new-funding-round/

[pandajames59-blog]

Pics of Banksy's Geisha's

(Another Classic Flashback. Enjoy!~)

Here are pics of Banksy's Geisha piece, before it got defaced. And then protected.

Source: http://melroseandfairfax.blogspot.com/2013/11/pics-of-banksys-geishas.html

[pandajames59-blog]

As Google’s effort to buy 21 acres in San Jose looms, mayor differentiates the deal from Amazon’s HQ2

As Google’s effort to buy 21 acres in San Jose looms, mayor differentiates the deal from Amazon’s HQ2

Google will the city of San Jose more than $110 million for the land

November 18, 2018 01:02PM

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo (Credit: Getty Images, YouTube)

As Google tries to assemble land for a new 21-acre megacampus in San Jose, the city’s mayor took the opportunity to make an example of how local government and tech companies could do business.

“Google will pay full freight for land, taxes, fees, and additional community benefits like affordable housing, in stark contrast to other cities handing out billions in local tax dollars to attract big companies,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said in a statement cited by CNBC. “We offered Google no subsidies, and they didn’t ask for them.”

Liccardo famously wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal criticizing the incentive packages Amazon expressly solicited for its HQ2, which cities around the country readily offered to the tune of billions, and calling them “a bad deal for taxpayers.”

Google will pay about $110 million for the land on which the company plans to build offices and residents for up to 20,000 employees. Since the project was first proposed in 2016, locals have expressed concern for what the “Google Effect” may mean for San Jose. The City Council will decide on the sale in a December 4 vote.  [CNBC] — Erin Hudson

Source: https://therealdeal.com/la/2018/11/18/as-googles-effort-to-buy-21-acres-in-san-jose-looms-mayor-differentiates-the-deal-from-amazons-hq2/

[pandajames59-blog]

For $399K, Glendale condo is timeless, spacious

It was built in 1954, but this spotless one-bedroom condo in northern Glendale doesn’t look dated at all.

The bright, 883-square-foot dwelling sits on the ground-floor of a Colonial Revival-style garden complex with a pool at 1325 North Central Avenue.

Hardwood floors run throughout the unit, which also sports new window shutters. Vintage tile appear in the galley-style kitchen and the full bathroom. The condo comes with in-unit laundry, as well as its own patio area, and one parking space is included. The building also has a pool.

The condo is listed for $399,000 with Marine Janikyan of JohnHart Real Estate. HOA fees are $302.

The lower-level condo is located in a charming midcentury complex.

Hardwood floors run throughout the unit.

Lots of counter space and storage in the galley-style kitchen.

The unit’s cool blue full bathroom features vintage tile.

The spacious bedroom.

The unit has its own private patio and garden area.

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Source: https://la.curbed.com/2019/5/3/18527568/condo-for-sale-glendale-one-bedroom