Everyday Living

more filming fun

By Eric Richardson — September 01, 2004

It was a bit nuts around my apartment last night. I mentioned two days ago that there were lights set up throughout the alley, and last night they got their use. Around 9:30pm they started shooting a scene where five black urban assault SUVs (mostly Hummers) roar around the corner from the parking lot to the south of our building (knocking a dumpster out of...


tracing farther back in history

By Eric Richardson — August 31, 2004
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As I was yesterday, I'm again today doing some digging into the history of the buildings that were eventually transformed into Premiere Towers. Yesterday I found the Sep.1923, LA Times article that announced the building's opening. Today I found another article from April, 1922, announcing that the building would be constructed. The article includes a reference...


where do you live? "Crack Alley"

By Eric Richardson — August 30, 2004

From a 1987 LA Times article titled, "You can walk outside. It's incredible." The result, for example, in notorious "Crack Alley"--a trash-strewn walkway between 6th and 7th streets linking Broadway and Spring Street--is that "the selling (of narcotics in the alley) is about gone," said Ronald Rubacher, an officer on patrol there. Hey... That's my alley...


premiere towers

By Eric Richardson — August 30, 2004

There's not a lot online about the downtown building I call home, so I've sort of pooled the different info I have on the building together to make a page on Premiere Towers. I'll add to it as I get more material, especially material on the history of the buildings. Right now I'm reading a really interesting piece from the April 1, 1991, LA Times. The piece...


downtown comedy

By Eric Richardson — August 30, 2004

This week's issue of the Downtown News has an article on Perry Kurtz and his attempts to launch comedy nights downtown. The piece, entitled "The Unsinkable Perry Kurtz: Local Funnyman Tries, Again, to Bring Comedy Downtown," includes this little snippet: But even the Redwood audience beat Kurtz's next outing. A resident of Spring Street's Premiere Towers...


ah, hollywood

By Eric Richardson — August 27, 2004

I went to bed last night to the faint sound and smell of a diesel generator running in the alley down below me. I don't know what they were shooting, but the street outside my apartment was packed full of production trucks and personnel. Broadway was involved, too, with a bank of lights set atop the Palace Theatre illuminating the buildings across the street...


ah, the BRU

By Eric Richardson — August 25, 2004

I've never been a fan of the Bus Riders Union. They sued the MTA ten years ago and got it to agree to a consent degree saying that it would add a lot of bus service, etc. And this may have really been important ten years ago. But today the BRU is stuck in the impossible mindset that buses are exclusively the answer. The LA Times today has an article on ongoing...


Downtown: debating the new LAPD HQ

By Eric Richardson — August 24, 2004

As promised earlier, I went to City Hall tonight to attend the meeting about the new police headquarters. It was my fist time in City Hall, so that part of it was cool in and of itself. It really is an amazing building. I arrived at the meeting about a half hour after it started, so I missed any remarks and presentations that opened. What I was there for...


Downtown: the fun of politics

By Eric Richardson — August 24, 2004

So assuming I get out of class a little early today I think I'm going to be making my way down to City Hall to sit in on the meeting on the new LAPD headquarters. The LA Times also has an article today. Now, I don't have a lot invested in the debate so I'm really going more to sit and listen than I am to push any particular agenda. I do feel like it's a bit...


senior living in downtown

By Eric Richardson — August 24, 2004

The LA Times today has an article on Angelus Plaza, the senior housing project right in the middle of downtown. I've wondered about how such a large project can survive in the midst of the renewed development taking place right now, and this article gets a little into its history. I had no idea that Angelus Plaza was 24 years old. The articles quotes a lady...