u/esotouric_tours

Los Angeles is so profoundly broken that we might as well ask the dead what to do.

Kevin Starr’s 2002 proposal for locally elected boroughs has been revived in Council File 26-1382, introduced by Tim McOsker, who was Mayor Jim Hahn's Chief of Staff when this bright idea dimmed in 2002.

https://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa=ccfi.viewrecord&cfnumber=26-1382

Starr’s answer to a growing secession movement was to respect citizens who sought local control and give it to them--to Federate LA.

His diagnosis of neighborhood councils was tough but fair: “government as therapy.” Feel good busywork, no governing power. (Today, City Hall ignores the NCs--Rec and Parks didn't even show up to present on fencing MacArthur Park.)

Starr said: let neighborhoods govern themselves, let boroughs handle regional matters and restrict City Hall power only to issues requiring citywide governance.

Had this happened in 2002, the multi-pronged collapse of Los Angeles could have been averted, with local problems solved by the neighbors most impacted before they became too entrenched--and too profitable--for the political machine to fix.

Neighborhoods wrecked by greed and mismanagement would still be intact. And our landmarks wouldn't be treated like garbage instead of the priceless cultural heritage and communal spaces that define us as Angelenos.

Think of all that might not be lost if the people had the power: The Ambassador Hotel, Taix, Hollywood Center Motel, Pacific Dining Car, the Fairfax Theatre, lovely Lytton Savings at Sunset and Crescent Heights.

Parker Center could be affordable workforce housing with a world class museum of forensic science history. The Triforium would be alive nightly with music and sparkling lights. Broadway would still be a thriving shopping district, Hollywood Boulevard, too.

You could dine on early Californio chili dishes in the courtyard of the Southwest Museum to the songs of old L.A. The ponies at the Griffith Park Pony Rides would still be trotting along. Olvera Street would be the hottest spot in a hot town.

Angelenos would be excited about the Olympics, not gritting their teeth and dreading the costs and security risks.

Imagine a City Hall without elected officials controlling the purse strings to manage astroturf cultural events that should be independently produced by Angelenos fostering positive public space and supporting each other.

Starr's proposal was for a bullseye of power: neighborhood councils meet and confer, then federate into boroughs of elected local leaders with real power. Boroughs do community governance while City Hall runs the port, airport, LAPD, LAFD, water, power, roads, parks, libraries.

The most valuable resource in Los Angeles is passionate, invested, creative Angelenos who want to make the things better. City Hall wants nothing to do with them--unless they kiss the rings of the idiots who got us into this mess.

Screw that and them and their smelly rings.

This is a fascinating twist in the civic saga, revived by a councilmember who actually serves his CD15 community, filtered through the stilled mind of Kevin Starr, who seems to have seen the future when he wrote in 2002:

“Federation, in fact, can be seen as the primary mode of effective post-modernist governance. Part of the reason for this resides, I believe, in information theory and practice. The digital revolution has tended to make each person his or her own information base. Each of us, in fact, are becoming more autonomous because we are the stewards, through digital technology, of a personally tailored information system."

Sign up to track the motion or submit your own comments:

https://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa=ccfi.viewrecord&cfnumber=26-1382

Read Kevin Starr’s 2002 op-ed, added to the public record by civic reformer and budget hawk Jack Humphreville:

https://cityclerk.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2026/26-1382_PC_PM_10-04-2026.pdf

Federation, si! Deconstruction, no! Why the hell not?

Link to sign up: https://t.e2ma.net/message/mr5f6k/qa7ctb

Clark Library info: https://clarklibrary.ucla.edu/

Our cure and correct demand for a proper hearing on removing the name of WWI memorial Pershing Square just hit the council file. Why do we do this and not accept City Hall's politically expedient take on history? Because L.A.'s ghosts are citizens, too.

Read more: https://esotouric.substack.com/biddymason5

Bungalow Court Housing in Los Angeles map: https://esotouric.com/bungalowcourt/

Empty Los Angeles post about the fire and redevelopment plan for 525 Union: https://www.emptylosangeles.com/p/another-and-bungalow-court-fire

A.F. Gilmore Company, the family office that developed and maintains the Original Farmer’s Market, has purchased the landmarked Fairfax Theatre facade and the land inside it for a very fair $7.2 Million.

https://atlasbrief.la/atlas-brief/7901-beverly-blvd

They recently bought the surface parking lot to the north, too. Gilmore understands heritage, good design and community-serving development, and we’re excited and hopeful to see what they have planned. This is very happy news for the Fairfax and for Art Deco in Los Angeles!

https://esotouric.substack.com/p/whokilledthefairfax

Gentle reader,

Too often, when Angelenos attempt to engage in the democratic process, it can feel as if the fix is in before they even walk through the doors of City Hall.

Elected officials have developed a troubling brand of hypocrisy: they go through all the motions of holding public hearings, taking public comment and very occasionally engaging in the most trivial of debates, then no matter how the public feels, they vote exactly the way the initiating official desires.

Sometimes citizens have to sue to stop them from acting this way—an expensive process that takes years to resolve and that distracts some of our best and brightest from otherwise improving the city they love.

But whoa, these lawsuits can turn up some wild discovery documents—evidence that changes how we view public hearings where votes are held, because we know there are puppet-masters inside City Hall who script the hearings and tell the “decision makers” what to say and how to vote.

That’s illegal, as is the “gentleman’s agreement” to always vote yes on a colleague’s motion, which the state [considers bribery](http://California Penal Code § 86,). Yet most votes in City Council are unanimous, with no debate.

Anyway, Thursday we went out to Pan Pacific Park to attend the Rec and Parks Commission hearing on fencing MacArthur Park. The fix was in there, with commissioners who were not as courageous or as serious about the task before them as the Cultural Heritage Commission was in July.

Rubber-stamping problematic documents is just how you do it, if you want to keep your place in the City Family. It’s one way of being an Angeleno involved in local government, we guess. Not our way, but we hear the parties are better.

At least we got to share an apple fritter from Bob’s Coffee & Doughnuts (est. 1947) in the Original Farmer’s Market afterwards, and visit with the ghosts of absent friends who are everywhere there.

We will have to write more about the RAP hearing, which like many incredibly significant public meetings, has no video or audio record online, because the only other local reporter in attendance decided to only share the City’s side, and not the opposition from us and many others in the public record. That’s one way of doing local interest journalism, we guess. But why? Doesn’t conflict between citizens and City Hall get clicks?

But not today. There’s a deadline looming, and we’re not going to blow it.

Friday was 28 days since the problematic vote to rename the World War I memorial Pershing Square after Biddy Mason, a remarkable early Angeleno who already has a fine park dedicated to her memory just a few blocks away.

We’ve just filed a cure and correct demand with the City, asking that the vote be tossed out and the hearing held again.

Two things went wrong that day that we believe require a do-over.

A false claim on the Council floor. Before asking her colleagues for their yes votes, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado said General John J. Pershing “never [set] foot into the city of L.A.” Only, he did.

On January 26, 1920, Pershing rode down Broadway in an open car beside Mayor Meredith P. Snyder. Snyder was a personal friend of Biddy Mason who spoke from the pulpit at First AME Church when her memorial window was dedicated in 1904. His own son, Captain Ross Snyder, was killed in France in July 1918 and his repatriated body would lie in state in Pershing Square in 1923.

The same false and ignorant claim about Pershing never visiting Los Angeles appeared in Kevin de León’s 2024 motion, was publicly refuted and dropped when Jurado updated his proposal with her new language. But then she said it anyway, using misinformation as justification for her council colleagues to vote to erase a war memorial.

Those elected officials, the public and all who are honored by the name Pershing Square deserve to have a truthful public record established before a vote occurs.

A thumb on the scale in public comment. City Council rules stated that there would be one minute of public comment per item. Four supporters of the renaming got to express themselves well beyond that, uninterrupted. WWI historian Courtland Jindra spoke against the renaming and was cut off. Virtual comment closed early, with us still waiting on the phone to be called.

The Council’s rules allow extra time only if every speaker gets it. Doing it this lopsided way violates the First Amendment (ratified 1791).

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

City Council, the same body that seeks to change it, conferred Pershing Square’s name on 11/12/1918, one day after the Armistice. The resolution invited General Pershing to visit for the dedication. That makes Pershing Square quite likely the first World War I memorial so designated in the United States.

We have asked the City to rescind the vote, hold off directing the Rec and Parks Commission from holding what we expect would be a pro-forma, rubber-stamped vote to approve the name change, preserve the meeting records, correct the historic record and rehear the item with equal time for all.

We’re also asking for the City to abide by its own well-understood process for renaming public spaces, which includes the staunch assertion that elected officials should never select the new name!

The City has 30 days to respond. And you have 2 days—until Sunday, 10/4/2026—to submit your own cure and correct demand, should you wish to join us in this advocacy...

(read the rest, and the full cure and correct demand, on our newsletter here)

Still no news on what is happening to the historic, now-shuttered Saharan Motor Hotel (see original post: http://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/1vv211f/preservation\_pal\_damian\_sullivan\_reports\_the/)

but permit applications have now been submitted to put a deck over the swimming pool.

https://www.ladbsservices2.lacity.org/OnlineServices/PermitReport/PcisPermitDetail?id1=26020&id2=10000&id3=01935

https://www.ladbsservices2.lacity.org/OnlineServices/PermitReport/PcisPermitDetail?id1=26014&id2=20000&id3=03501

Stay tuned! https://www.laconservancy.org/learn/historic-places/penguin-mels-drive-in-diner/

Dig into this strange saga: https://esotouric.substack.com/silverplatter

Urgent! Please send an email NOW or come to the RAP hearing Thursday morning to oppose a half-baked MacArthur Park fence that will KILL heritage trees and HARM migratory birds. Cultural Heritage Commissioner who objected was already removed by Karen Bass! https://esotouric.substack.com/p/westlakefence

Learn more about the project here: http://esotouric.substack.com/oracle

Follow them on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/echoesfromthehill.la

Breaking: Judge Percy "No Mercy" Anderson just threw out the Marilyn Monroe house owners’ federal lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles. He disagrees the Brentwood landmark is essentially worthless, doesn't accept claim that the City encouraged trespassing, notes they could have predicted opposition to demolishing this world-famous residence.

Scroll down to read the decision: https://esotouric.substack.com/p/marilynmonroe

More info or to sign up: https://esotouric.com/event/bunker-noir/