Evacuated!

Atwater Village in the news:

Crews Investigate Hazardous Material Spill At Factory

Firefighters will monitor four 55-gallon drums of epoxy that blew their lids Friday at a factory in Atwater Village ... About 40 firefighters were sent to an address in the 4500 block of W. Electronics Place [map] about 2:20 pm ... The firm makes makes polymers and adhesives ... No one has been injured and there's no fire, but there are some fumes ... Some of the businesses and homes around the area were evacuated.

LA's Equivalent of Squeegee Men

Let's call it Skid Row Valet.

Maybe it was my out-of-state plates. Maybe he could see I was scouring the car for coins. I pulled up to a parking meter in downtown LA's Fashion District - southbound Maple before Olympic (map) - and this ensued:

Meter Hustler (approaching driver's window): Hey, you want one or two?

Me (in car, windows up, doors locked): What?

Meter Hustler: Do you want this meter for one hour or two?

Me: I don't need your help.

Meter Hustler: Hey, man, you afraid of me? I'm handicapped!

I played like I couldn't hear him. He eventually wandered off, but first he ranted to a shopowner about how he was just trying to help, what I jerk I was, et cetera, and so on.

Needless to say I left that spot, found parking elsewhere. It's a good thing I did. Here's how the scam works, according to an LADOT Parking Enforcement Officer:

We usually have this kind of trouble along 4th [near Skid Row] not this far down [past 9th]. Some of the homeless guys rig the meters so they won't work. Then they approach cars and ask for money so they can make the meter work. It's illegal to rig the meters but it's also illegal to park at a rigged meter, so we [LADOT] will write you a ticket. And if you refuse to pay the guy and park there anyway, you'll also come back to find your car completely scratched up.

Later I checked that meter. It read 0:00 (not FAIL) but I couldn't tell if it would accept coins. (And I wasn't about to spend my own cold hard money to find out.) The SUV parked there hadn't fed it, and scammer man was nowhere to be seen.

More about a year-old incident in this ongoing downtown Los Angeles parking meter scam from from Metroblogging LA.

Five Things You Might Not Know

1. HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher rehearses its Friday show in front of a live audience on Thursday afternoons at CBS Television City (about eight miles from Atwater Village)
   
2. Bill Maher himself comes out - yesterday on the The Price Is Right stage (same stage as The Carol Burnett Show, Sonny & Cher, All in the Family) - to recite his monologue, conduct mock interviews where his writers sub for guests, and read an extended "New Rules" segment
   
3. Funniest line on tonight's new show: "Quid pro ho"
   
4. Bill Maher is not a large man. Neither tall nor fat
   
5. But some of the people who are available on weekday mid-afternoons to attend rehearsals are quite large. Or strange. Or lonely. Or all of the above

Ponytail Checked Out

The hipsters were there.

Or maybe they were scenesters.

Fauhemians, perhaps? Or is that just how they dress? Hmm.

I'm not sure who they all were, but they had turned 21 two weeks ago and were lured to Safari Sam's on Sunset last night for broken promises of "free booze all night!" (vodka-soda isn't "booze" apparently), a half-open club peppered with haphazard signage ("This way! Not that way!") and DJ mixes of Great Prom Themes from the 80s.

OK, so it wasn't for me. I need to find a classic bar. Not a club. Not a lounge. Not a tavern or a pub or a theme park or a scene.

How about a clean, polite, interesting bar with martinis that aren't named by Brach's and servers that spend more than a second per dollar with their customers.

Is that too much to ask?

I'll Take You, Los Angeles

Not that one little household in Atwater Village will make a difference to this beautiful, hard-to-get city, but perhaps I can offer a shoulder of recovery from this very public Craigslist breakup:

It's over, I'm leaving you...

Dear Los Angeles - As you know, well I've been unhappy with you for quite some time. The truth of the matter is you don't love me and I never loved you... More here

So What Neighborhood Are You In?

I live in Atwater Village.

But if I'm talking to someone who doesn't live in Los Angeles, I say I'm east of Hollywood.

(They've at least heard of Hollywood, even if they couldn't place it on an LA map.)

If I'm talking to someone from LA who lives west of the 101 (or God forbid west of the 405) I say Los Feliz.

(Close enough. It seems all LA locals have heard of Los Feliz, in part thanks to Kiefer. Atwater Village gets blank stares.)

Only if I'm talking to someone who lives east of the 101 - in Los Feliz or Mt. Washington or Glasell Park - do I confess the truth.

The Heat Is On

The choppers, they are a-circling.

For the last two nights - around 1:00am - a helicopter has been circling the Atwater Village environs, searchlight on.

I assume it's LAPD. But what's it looking for?

It'll be a few days before LAPD Crime Maps update for the week.

Yahoo Goes One Up

Just released, Yahoo! Maps Beta does a nice job with neighborhood-based findings. It's draggable, like Google Maps. And it offers category browsing, like Yelp. (Though Yahoo beats Yelp if only because it doesn't rely on someone reviewing an establishment before it's mapped.)

A few handy Atwater Village-centered Yahoo maps:

Movie theaters

Pizza Joints

Malls

Pet Stores

Trader Joe's

Beastie Boys Peed Here

So whatcha whatcha whatcha want for the former HQ of the Beastie Boys, an office located in "hip" Atwater Village?

How about a cool $5 million. That's $1,000 per square foot! (But real-estate agent spellcheck will cost extra.)

Next to famous Club Tee Gee. From Craigslist:

$5001500 / 5000ft²

Creative office space in
famed Beastie Boys headquartes.

Newly renovatied creative office space available in legendary office building, previous Beastie Boys/Grand Royale headquarters. Multiple spacious units of varying size and cost available. Offices/Editing/Sound booths perfect for Film/TV/Music/Apparel/Graphic design company. Located in hip Atwater Village, adjacent to Silver Lake, restaurants, shopping, and parking. Call 323-953-3543 for information and appointment. Available May 1.

[48 Interior Pictures]

[Map of 3218 1/2 Glendale Blvd.]

Mortarless Mural

Next on the Atwater Village cleanup hitlist: The mural at Mortarless Building Supply (2707 Fletcher Dr.), this Saturday April 22 at 8:00am.

Check out more photos (here and here) from the original 2001 creation of the Rafael Escamilla mural. Here's the artist in action:


The mural includes landmarks visible from Atwater Village:

• Griffith Observatory
  
• Forest Lawn Memorial Building
  
• Fletcher Drive Bridge
  
• Van de Kamp's Bakery
  
• Great Heron Gate at Rattlesnake Park
  
• Red Car from the 1940s and 50s
  
• A neighborhood home

On the Borders

From an old Q&A by an Atwater Village real estate agent:

One thing interesting about Atwater is that in a city of amorphous neighborhoods, Atwater has very defined and well-recognized borders.

To the west it's the LA River and I-5...

To the east it's the railroad tracks...

To the south it's Fletcher Drive...

The northern border isn't quite so clear. Easily put, it's the Glendale city limits, but there's a spit of City of Los Angeles land that protrudes deep into what you would think is Glendale.

So on the north, should we just go with the Colorado Blvd. ramp to I-5? There isn't much above that.