art gallery in the basement of a shoe store downtown

This weekend we went to see a friend’s artwork in a group show. The work was all by Korean American Artists and it was in the basement of a shoe store in the fashion district downtown. We walked a couple of blocks past the homeless folks and the general downtown weirdness — everything smells like pee downtown. I mean, it kind of always did, but now especially so. They’ve been building high rise condos everywhere — cranes all over the skyline. So of course all the affordable housing stock has been destroyed. I kind of don’t understand how Angelenos don’t make the connection. Real estate developers buy up cheap housing, tear it down, put up luxury condos, which are sold as investments that sit empty, and more people are forced out of their affordable homes, rinse and repeat. Makes perfect sense that we’ll probably have Rick Caruso, a fake democrat, billionaire real estate developer as our next mayor. Karen Bass is ahead in the polls so that means she’ll lose. I’ve seen this show before.

Would Karen Bass be a good mayor? I don’t know. Probably not. Probably not as bad as Caruso. But would Caruso be worse than what we’ve had? I get that he’s only in it to make himself richer. Maybe rez0ne things so he can buy cheap housing stock and build even more unaffordable luxury condos. That said, I like his malls/condo complexes: the Americana and the Grove and I would not be opposed to classic swing jazz, dancing water features, ye-olde trolly cars as public transportation and the smell of Wetzels Pretzels at all hours of the day and night. As many times as I have been to the Americana I have never once seen a resident of the condos above the mall sitting out on their balcony. I seriously doubt anyone lives there. I’ve never met anyone who claimed to live there.

All of my TV projects are falling apart. Which I have to admit, I’m not the least bit surprised. I’m not even disappointed. The only thing I regret is how much time my writing partner monopolized for these impossible shows. His ideas are all really wacky and the passes we’ve been getting are all along the lines of “we don’t know how to sell this.” I keep trying to steer him toward something more accessible but 1. He does not want to do any idea that is not his idea (typical director). And 2. His ADHD means that he gets bored with ideas very quickly so he keeps adding on to them until they collapse under the weight or a million flourishes. He’s up for a directing job on a big show for CBS and I hope he takes it. He’s not as maniacal when he’s working and it makes my life easier.

I wish I had a big bag of money.