Noho's Etymology

Noho as a term for a section within North Hollywood can be traced to the 1980s, but its use as term for a neighborhood district can be traced at least to the early 1970s when people began applying it to a neighborhood of warehouses and factory buildings north of Houston Street in New York City. This label emerged after the parallel district south of Houston received the label SoHo in the 1960s.

New York's SoHo is probably the most famous, but it was not the first. A district in London named Soho dates to the 17th century. By the 19th century, London's Soho had become a neighborhood for immigrants, including Karl Marx in the 1850s, as well as home to a seamy nightlife of music halls and prostitution. In the twentieth century, the unconventional atmosphere of the district attracted artists and poets to its pubs and music scene, and in the 1950s coffee shops became the center of Beatnik culture. Soho also became the launch point for British Rock and Roll, with The Rolling Stones performing for the first time at the Marquee Club in 1962.

When the name from a neighborhood in one city is applied to the neighborhood in another city, some of the accumulated associations of the original neighborhood are extended to the new neighborhood.
These associations may ultimately have little connection to the complex history of the original neighborhood.

In the case of the NoHo arts district, local business leaders explicitly intended to borrow from the image of SoHo in New York, where a formerly industrial area became an arts district and then a trendy upscale shopping area.

For this reason it is valuable to provide a brief overview of how SoHo's transformation took place.

Blog going NoHo

After nearly two years the story is changing.

I've decided to shift from writing about the broad interconnective tissue of transportation to writing about a micro-muscle, an eyelash--the redevelopment of North Hollywood. My near-hood is becoming the center of controversy as a model of TOD, transit oriented development, and I will be investigating what it all means.

Some of the questions arising over this transformation include:

What are the various visions of a more urban neighborhood?

Who is included and excluded in these visions?

How are the changes in North Hollywood linked to globalization?

Will gentrification mean worsening conditions for the urban poor?

How will the goal of reducing sprawl conflict or coincide with the goal of providing quality affordable housing?

Soiling Green Vehicles

              You tell everybody.
              Listen to me. Hatcher.
              You've gotta tell them!
              Soylent Green is people!
              We've gotta stop them somehow!

The growing list of cities, including Los Angeles, that provide free parking to low emission vehicles requires that I clarify my objections to these mechanical stimulants for enviro-wanna-bes.

Most important, these cars are NOT eco-friendly. Yes, Americans so wish we could buy our way out of earth's destruction, but consumption of any massively complex mobility toy requires large scale plundering of natural resources--different metals for engine and sound systems, petroleum for multi-plastics, who knows what for interior seat plushness--and accompanying planet spoliation. Furthermore, driving these pacifiers of greeny lust contributes to the So-Cal lifestyle of earth stretching asphalt profligacy no less than driving a Hummer H2.

Nearsightedness in councilmembers hardly surprises, but hearing lefty stalwarts at KPFK give voice to clean car hawkers brings the reflux of vodka sauce beyond control of Prilosec to the brain.

Personally, I would love to replace my fifteen year old red paint faded Prizm with a shiny blue bluetooth Ipod comptatible new Prius, but I just don't have 25,000 lying around.

And who does? Certainly not the guys keeping your auto pristine pretty at the local car wash: an investigation by the LA Times recently found these workers living in superexploitation land--many are paid only in tips for a "trial period" after which, if they were good, they might get minimum wage.

So how exactly does doling out free parking and HOV lane access to Whole Food shoppers of almond crusted goat cheese over baby mixed greens with tarragon infused champagne vinegar dressing benefit the working poor? It doesn't.

Dump the hybrid and get in the fight for a thousand strong fleet of articulated buses rushing past traffic on dedicated freeway lanes. You might not meet mid '90s sitcom stars, but you will meet the people that mow their lawns, clean their toilets, iron their blue jeans and yep wash their cars.

Springtime for Summary and Partial Manifesto

Well hello Canada!

My roll of recognition hit two last week. A producer at CBC's Definitely Not The Opera contacted me for an interview. The popular culture show's host asked me to explain the impact of traffic on people's personality. Why, for example, does weather seem to bring us together while traffic divides? Why do people have a sense of entitlement when they get behind the wheel? What leads to road rage? (You can listen to my interview here.)

Regular readers should know by now, but this provides an opportunity to recap, reset, reader's digest the past two years:

People love cars because they provide the feel of controlling a powerful machine amid a too complicated modern world.

Auto independence celebrated in action films, race car tv, and curvy empty road cruising ads masks the drivers profound dependence on others--from miners to highway engineers.

This fantasy of self-reliance extends equal blindness to the environmental devastation spreading far beyond smog and carbon emissions to the massive chemical spillage and metal extraction required for racing grave pits of personal mobility.

While feeding an illusion of unspoiling innocence, hybrids, electrics, biofuel Benzes all contribute to this high speed poisoning and ever further sprawl of eco-ruining asphalt-brick-steel ex-urban lives.

The micro-horrors of bus riding razor cut the personal party balloon, tiny leaks hissing the deflation of dreamy separation from quotidian vagabond grime. At least for a moment, one must confront the extreme inequality wrought by planetwide financial propping of U.S. super-consumerism.

This blog seeks to articulate the links between local/global pleasures/pains, with a politics of partiality not unlike Donna Haraway's:

"There is no unmediated photograph or passive camera obscura in scientific accounts of bodies and machines; there are only highly specific visual possibilities, each with a wonderfully detailed, active, partial way of organizing worlds. All these pictures of the world should not be allegories of infinite mobility and interchangeability, but of elaborate specificity and difference and the loving care people might take to learn how to see faithfully from another's point of view, even when the other is our own machine."
--Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective

Sunday Driver, Yeah!

My blog has not yet cracked any of the top L.A. lists. My vain search for fame and an Amazon sales rank above 100,000 seems destined for dust. But has this dust been given the breath of life? This week Sue Doyle of the LA Daily News asked me to comment for a story she's writing on the decline of the Sunday drive, so here it is...

It is certainly true that home entertainment--tivo cable connected plasma system--has meant more reasons to stay in, and negotiating contemporary crowded highways brings connotations of stress rather than fun--why choose to drive on Sunday after weekdays filled with sometimes hourlong freeway fights?

But the decline of pleasure driving must also be placed in historical context.

The automobile's rise to dominance in the U.S. contains a central irony. In the early twentieth century the car was celebrated as bringing health to city dwellers by providing access to the country, but ultimately the auto's popularity destroyed the country through urban sprawl.

People who wish to escape the city for a scenic drive must drive farther and farther before finding scenic landscape for a peaceful roll. From San Clemente to Ventura, Redlands to Santa Clarita extends one large conurbation of strip malls, tract homes and office "parks" linked by very unpeaceful rubber screeching, metal flashing, smog packed asphalt.

The Sunday drive is dead, unless it's a drive to the mall, where, strangely enough, people like to walk--because a walk down Valencia's McBean Parkway or Thousand Oaks' Moorpark Road just lacks the same charm.


Park Oaks Shopping Center on Moorpark Road--Loopnet

Rocky Mountain Malling

Photo of Denver International Airport by mcwatt00

Cool-Whip topped Brown Betty, deserted dessert in a back road alter-Denny's Diner, DIA just sits there waiting for the breakfast rush. Moist melt in the mouth crust, lush brown cattle displaced bison range, waiting to bloom asphalt, stucco, ceramic tile, crawls with scifi monster-cockroach tractor-scrapers.

Along Boulder-Denver turnpike emerge gumdrops on rolling hills, Monet haystacks in winter afternoon orange. A sign declares Beautiful Wildgrass Homes from the 200,000s.

At Westminster Center, two teens, plaid drooping over Soundgarden-T, zipped Hollister hood sweat, truck longboards onto coach for university town sidewalk cruising.

Snow frosted pine cliffs of Flatiron jutt behind tourists strolling Pearl Street for crafty treasures of authentic Coloradocity: jagged to heal migrane black purpelized crystal chunks, handwoven finger puppets--could be coyote, could be mountain goat--dangly bead earrings, framed watercolor kitsch sunsetting over rocky-mountain-high.

Brick towering shopping cliffs of Flatiron Crossing lit by red neon to pastel blue chains of familiarity--PF Changs, Dillards, Crate & Barrell--backdrops obelisk marked Mainstreet at Flatiron Crossing, coming soon to mimic neotraditionalist mimicry of nineteenth century small town parochialism, in the view from fourth floor Broomfield Townplace Suite by Marriott.

The walk from Broomfield Park-n-Ride, Highway 36 at Highway 121/ Wadsworth Parkway at West 120th St/Old Wadsworth Blvd at Highway 128/Interlocken Loop-- traverses Interlocken Advanced Technology Environment "a 963-acre, full service advanced technology business park," with "nearby safe, affordable communities . . . Interlocken offers pacesetting companies the location and resources they need to compete in today’s globalized economy, including an advanced infrastructure, superior multi-modal transportation access . . . extensively landscaped parks, trails, child care facilities, athletic fields . . ."

Triple A four diamond crown of past-present-futurist techno-habitation, Omni Resort, with "390 deluxe accommodations and suites . . . elegantly appointed and full of modern amenities" supplies "a wealth of on-site pleasures." 27 hole golf course, "ranked third best resort course of Colorado," hosts John Bronco God of Denver Elway/ Sun Microsystems Celebrity Classic. "Or if you’d just like to escape into a sanctuary of relaxation in Mokara Spa, two outdoor pools and whirlpool . . . The Omni Interlocken Resort is sure to sweep you off your feet."

Cold swept air burns fingers gripping duffel trooping through miles of dormant sod embracing perches of hexagon maroon office retreats. Rushes of headlights cut through disorienting darkness. At last, around a bend, a speckled grey rabbit flips through brush at warmth of motel lobby door.

Oh, all the trees are calling after you
And all the venom snipers after you
Are all the mountains bolder after you?
--VU

Spirit of the '80s

The sun beams down on a brand new day / No more welfare tax to pay / Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light / Jobless millions whisked away / At last we have more room to play / All systems go to kill the poor tonight
--1980, The Dead Kennedys, "Kill the Poor"


Susan Meiselas, New York Times Magazine

December 11, 1981, the U.S. trained Atlacatl Battalion massacred 900 men women and children in El Mozote, El Salvador. In response, President Reagan, with characteristic vicious smirk of a well-trained Stalinist, brushed off flesh shrunk to scattered skeleton images as liberal media fictions.

January 30 in Simi Valley, machine gun tenderized corpses wreak from faux library colonial ivory halls while Gipper children McCain et al. soak in pink powdered sugar mist of Disney store raving mad x-trip plush toy history.

But 1980s presidential illness extended beyond checkbook deathsquad anti-communism fueling blowback across the globe. The cruel Reaganite virus dealt equal brutality to the domestic sphere. Cowboy actor rode to victory on the horse of hatred, demonizing urban poor as dependent on the dole. He whipped straight out racist rage against "excesses of the 60s"--strangely echoed by Obama--such as the pittance of aid to inner cities ravaged by decades of desertion--while billions continued to flow in white people welfare--suburban freeways, homeowner tax breaks, weapons contracts--toxic encrusted tickytack hill prosperity. Fed commitment to public housing abandoned, thousands sent to life of shower free butt cracks stench rising up my nose to nauseousness, so I pop a coughdrop and suck hard on eucalyptus but can't smother it away.

The big O, who worked on the South Side, should know better, but no less sad our Ba-Rock-Star candidate failed to call out the chicken manure of Clintonite hypocrisy. The Arka-Mart prez of neo-liberal nineties lapped a labrador sloppy slurp kiss on "starve the city feed the burbs" policies and piled on with baseball bat cracking across face of underclass, cheerfully signing malicious race-baiting "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act."

Last week, LAT transportation columnist Steve Hymon wondered where transportation policy would go in Campaign 2008. Answer: where clothespin nosed homeowners toss table scraps that might help street weary city folk survive in the shadow of sprawlholic backyard barbecue blackpeppered swordfish steak mango chutney lifestyles--in an unsacred waste burial ground just north of the Roxford Street exit on the Golden State Freeway in Sylmar.