Saturday News Chum Stew: History and Los Angeles

It’s Saturday, and that means it is time to clear out the links for the week that didn’t theme. This week brings a number of items related to history and Los Angeles:

• Living in the Past. Suppose your kids just can’t put that modern technology down. What do you do to teach them a lesson? How about forcing your family to live as they did years ago for a year? That’s what one family did. Now they didn’t go back to Elizabethan or other really historic times — they chose the glory days of… 1986. No Internet (so they say). Cassettes. Vintage Encyclopedias. Hard-wired phones. Banking in person. Paper maps.  My only problem with this is that they did have Internet back in 1986. I know; I’ve been on the net since 1979. Of course, they would have had to restrict themselves to USENET, Gopher, and Email, and dial-up connections unless they could afford a T1 line. Oh… and Unix. At that point, I don’t think MS-DOS was networked (Windows 3.1 was 1992).
• Clowns Will Eat Me. Here’s an odd article: Smithsonian explores the history of Scary Clowns. Now I’m not the type that is scared by clowns, but there are a number of clowns that are intentionally scary. The history and many forms of the clown itself is quite interesting.
• Running Away. When you’re scared, you want to run away. That’s just what one county in California wants to do: Siskiyou County has voted to secede from California. They want to get a number of other Northern California and Southern Oregon counties to join them. Never mind the fact that they would never get the legislatures of California and Oregon to go along with their scheme, and they certainly wouldn’t get Congress. Never mind the fact that they would have no major cities or industries to provide the state with a sustainable income. Facts don’t matter. If you recall, a few weeks ago, I wrote about a county in Northern Colorado that wanted to do the same thing.

Chatzi Kaddish. Etsy Problems. OK, this one didn’t theme anywhere, unless you can figure it out. Here’s an article on why the Esty Economy is Crumbling… in the face of Chinese knockoffs. Perhaps this link is like the Chatzi Kaddish — a rest between subjects.

• Licorice Pizza and Stinky Cheese. Turning to Los Angeles. Here are two interesting finder lists. The first talks about the best place to find Vinyl (i.e., LPs — Long Playing albums, once sold by a store called “Licorice Pizza”) in Los Angeles. I’m familiar with some of these: Record Surplus on the West Side is great, as as Amoeba in Hollywood. Orphaned CDs near us is good, but it is hard to find things. I’ve always meant to stop by Record Outlet in T.O. All these stores tend not to price used vinyl like new CDs (which is what we saw in San Diego).  As for cheese, here’s a list of the best cheese shops in Los Angeles.
• A Temple Restored. This Rosh Hashanah saw the return to service of the main sanctuary at Wilshire Blvd Temple in Koreatown. I spent many years at WBT, and knew its depths well.. but I never really explored the main sanctuary. It was lightly used even in the early 1980s when I was there. They’ve also installed a fascinating new art exhibit.
• Saving the Neon. Here’s an interesting article about another attempt to save a sign in Los Angeles: They are attempting to save and restore a Chinese Dragon neon sign that used to be at Graumann’s Chinese. They’ve even got an Indegogo to raise funds. This comes on the heels of the rescue of the Tiffany Theatre sign, and the rescue of the Henry’s Tacos sign.

Chatzi Kaddish. Owl Suits. Our last chatzi kaddash — something to close the Los Angeles theme. Did you know that Italian has a word meaning the-jacket-left-hanging-over-the-back-of-your-chair-in-the-office-while-you’re-gallivanting-around-town? It is “Giacca civetta“, which means “Owl Jacket”. I’m sure we all have our Owl Jackets that we leave out for others to see.

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

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Election Analysis: Assembly District 45 Special Primary Election

Actions often have unintended consequences and costs. Quite a few years ago, everyone wanted term limits because it (supposedly) meant you would not have career politicians, and more people would run for office. Did that happen? Not in your life — we have politicians that just run from office to office. In California, what has happened is that politi-critters do their stints in the state assembly and state senate, and then move to the city councils.

That’s what happened to our state senator: Just reelected to the state senate for his last term, he opted to run for Los Angeles City Council to start over again. He won… leaving a vacant seat in AD45, bringing us a special election a week from Tuesday. [BTW, term limits is also going to bring a sea change to the LA County Board of Supervisors in the next few years] We’ve been getting calls for a few weeks from candidates we don’t know, and I tell them all the same thing: I will do a detailed ballot analysis and make my decision shortly before the election.

That’s this post.

So even though you aren’t in Assembly District 45, you’re the lucky winner of my analysis. The primary election brings us 11 candidates: 7 Democrats, 3 Republicans, and one who has no party preference. What factors will I use to determine things. First, I want a candidate that understands California’s problems — in particular, the issues with transportation infrastructure. I’d like a candidate that acknowledges understanding of cybersecurity issues, as I often see bills in the legislature about that. I’d also like a candidate that understands the valley, and (as they say) “shares my values” (which tend to be progressive Jewish values). In particular, regarding the latter, I don’t want a candidate that will push conservative Christian values. I look at who endorses the candidates: that often shows individuals with whom values and agendas are shared. So let’s look at the candidates:

Read the rest of this entry »

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

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