There was actually June Gloom this morning! What a refreshing sight to see.
News & Misc
- Tiger Woods might buy TPC? The Signal says there’s no grounds to the rumor that Tiger Woods is interested in purchasing the posh west-side country club & golf course in the wake of LandSource/Newhall Land’s bankruptcy. In other BK news, Signal reporter Jim Holt got Landsource to admit that while the BK proceedings go on in Delaware, no “Planning, speculating, projecting is taking place” at LandSource. Link
- Benz Road situation is an even bigger mess than I thought: From my reading of the situation, City traffic staff and the city manager himself are in a no-win position. When they try to find out what residents of the entire neighborhood think, they get criticized because the survey sample is too broad. But if they ignore neighboring streets, they’re bound to just transfer the problem elsewhere. The problem has its roots in County and City planning that goes back years. Katie Geyer put it this way in her excellent story on the matter: “As housing developments sprout, traffic-flow planners are sometimes stymied by roads that don’t quite meet up with each other, as is the case with Copper Hill and Bouquet Canyon.” Link Said City Manager Pulskamp of the city’s traffic planners: “There’s no secret [solution] we’re hiding”
- National Guard to set part of SCV on fire to recruit your sons and daughters: They Army National Guard will burn a section of the SCV to film what I presume to be a recruitment television commercial. It could happen anytime between noon today and 1 am Friday. The LA County Fire Department will be on hand with three fire trucks in case things go wrong. You know recently the city said filming was up in Santa Clarita, but I think it’s WAY UP. I see filming in Newhall almost every day now. Link
- COC Instructor talks about his experience in Georgia: No, not the Peach state (or the island in the Southern Hemisphere), rather the former Soviet state of Georgia. A COC instructor named Kevin Anthony recently visited the country to teach university students about “the value of customer service.” Anthony is chair of the Hotel Management program at COC and he spoke to KHTS about his experience here.
- Suburbs, traffic, bikes and hypermiling: Local environmentalist Lynne Plambeck had an interesting column in today’s Signal. Predictably, she couldn’t shake the water topic for about half her column, but did ask an important question by the end: Will high oil prices doom exurbs like Santa Clarita? It’s a question I’ve been pondering for weeks, and apparently others have too. This Signal reader says that she decided to ditch her car after she spent $70 to fill up. Her replacement? The bicycle. She points to a photo-essay on how people in Amsterdam use their bikes (none of them wear helmets because there’s no cars around) and says she and her family just purchased four bikes from a local shop. As for traffic, KCRW host Warren Olney had an interesting program on Tuesday night’s Which Way LA in which transit, personal vehicles and sprawl were discussed. Finally, Wired has a good article on “hypermiling” - techniques you can employ to increase the gas mileage of your car.
- Hart gets $152k for emergency preparedness: Hart will use the funds to implement a “nine-point program of action which includes training, purchase of communications equipment and supplies and implementation of a mobile command post which can be moved to specific schools in an emergency.” Say what? A mobile command post like the Sheriff’s have? This I gotta see.
- More attacks on City Council and City Manager: Bossert says city residents should fight the “lying, cheating” folks at City Hall while the NotaFerryFan youtuber posts another video criticizing Pulskamp and flattering TimBen Boydston. Hey you know that quote that this NotaFerryFan attributes to Pulskamp? The quote attributed to Pulskamp says that he wants to convert the SCV into an “urban center.”Turns out they pulled that from last year’s 51 Most Influential article on Pulskamp. The thing is none of the 51 “influential” people in that Signal insert talk about themselves; rather, the article on Pulskamp and everyone else in the list has quotes from others about them.