Conan's (Street) Sign Of The Times

The Mayor's office has responded to talk show host Conan O'Brien's request to have his own eponymous Los Angeles City Street. And lookie lookie, it also features one o' dem new-fangled Chevy logo/UFO street signs that The Militant talked about in great detail a few months ago.

The gist of the video response is that Coco needs to prove his worth to the City by giving back in some form or another. Though The Miltant has had his criticisms of Villaraigosa through the years (most of them non-transportation-related though), The Militant is 100% in agreement that the Boston-area native-via-NYC transplant has to sow, and not just reap, in this urban farmland of Los Angeles.

The Militant may or may not be a Conan fan of course, but the "giving back" mandate should apply to  everyone in the entertainment industry. Do we not have a huge divide between the money-grubbing entertainment industry and the countless urban needs in this City? Imagine if all the entertainment companies would "prove their worth" in this City (other than sponsoring the annual AIDS Walk Los Angeles, which seems to be the sole token example of community support the entertainment industry really does).

Furthermore, when the Angelenos listed their litany of community give-backs in the Mayor's video, The Militant couldn't help but realize that he's already done most of these things already.

The Militant has been living in Los Angeles longer than Conan O'Brien obviously, but his blog (4 years) has long outlasted the talk show host's 15-month stint here (7 months at NBC, 8 months at TBS).

So where's Militant Angeleno Street? RECOGNIZE!

Golden Dragon Parade: Putting The "RAT" In "CELEBRATION"

You may or many not have been wondering what the Militant has been up to the past week or so, but to cut a long story short he spent it in his Compound's Sick Bay. Cold weather worsened his condition and he elected not to bore you readers to death by writing posts about the wonders of local HDTV sub-channels, of which the non-television watching Militant was forced to spend his time on while recuperating.

But Saturday was a whole 'nother story. He had gotten well enough to not only step outside the compound, but the 80-degree sunny and smogless Winter day was an instant lure to get his Militant Ass back on his bike and huff it down Sunset to Chinatown. For it's Chinese New Year, and there be a parade goin' on!

Over a hundred thousand people or all sorts of shapes and colors joined the Militant to see the 109th annual Golden Dragon Parade, organized by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles, is the City's ushering-in of the Lunar New Year, this time being the Year of The Rat.

The Militant arrived in time to park his bike at the Chinatown Branch Public Library and wander about, as the parade was already going on at Hill Street (the rest of Hill across the freeway was where the parade assembled), and would make a U-formation back down on Broadway, so he cut across the street to see the parade in its entirety.

The streets were already strewn with multicolored confetti, and in some places, burned-out red paper firecracker shells. The Militant soon learned that vendors sold $4 bazooka-like tubes of "Party Poppers" which, after a careful twist along its bottom, caused a spontaneous explosion of colored paper and foil bits (pictured left), which got carried by the wind into various directions. Most of the confetti pieces were curly, and the wind blew them into sections of the street where they accumulated over the duration of the parade.

The parade included the usual parade amenities: floats, dignitaries, marching bands, drill teams, but a Chinese New Year parade always has much more: martial arts displays, beauty queens, benevolent associations, drums, gongs and most of all -- lion and dragon dances. An added bonus this year was the inclusion of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Mascots (pictured right - and no one seemed to turn their backs this time).

At one point in the parade a CNN reporter and cameraman went around the crowd. The reporter was instructing the cameraman to film people speaking in Chinese, and was a bit frustrated when she couldn't find too many people speak the language. Umm...why not show the diverse array of Angelenos who were there to enjoy the parade and take in Chinese culture than to show the rest of the world that this parade was just a mere "Chinese thing?"

They did find a few Chinese-speaking people to film (not interview).

It was a great parade, on the best of all possible days, weather-wise. But 3/4ths into the parade it seemed to drag on. Finally, at the end, after the last dragon dancers, the crowd joined the parade and marched south on Broadway to a festival on the corner of Cesar E. Chavez and Broadway. But that wasn't all -- even after the parade, the sound of seemingly endless firecracker explosions and drums and gongs reverberated along the urban canyons of the Chinatown streets, including a group of lion dancers visiting various businesses on North Spring, in the shadow of a very-crowded Chinatown (M) Gold Line Station (Many people went Metro today, nice, nice!).

In years past, the Militant would visit Chinatown in the evening of the first Saturday of Chinese New Year and find nothing but long-burned-out firecracker shells marking any sign of a celebration. But now Chinatown seems more alive, happening and willing to party like it was 4706.

MORE PICS TIME!!!1

Seeing Red: A dance troupe performs with their loyal fans.


Oh Mickey You're So Fine: Yes, the Disneyfication of a community event is lame, but hey, when it's the Year of the Rat, why *not* have the world's most famous rodent as your Grand Marshal?


Mayor (Cheong)Sam: Antonio wishes the crowd a "Happy New Year" in Mandarin, Cantonese, English and Spanish.


Joy Luck: A serendipitously-placed Angels Walk kiosk in the foreground; KNBC's Ted Chen waves in the background.

Wave Like This: Miss Taiwan(-Los Angeles, the Militant assumes) and her court greets the paradegoers along Broadway.


We Built This City: Benevolent Associations like the one above were responsible for building today's Chinatown.


Join In The Parade: The crowd spills onto Broadway at the tail end of the procession.


(Lion) Dancing In The Streets: A troupe of lion dancers, accompanied by drums and gongs, overflow onto North Spring Street and tell the evil spirits to haul ass.

Why Can't Los Angeles Have A Mayor Like This?

This is Michael Nutter, the newly-inaugurated mayor of Philadelphia, PA, droppin' some rhymes on the mic in his rendition of The Sugarhill Gang's seminal 1979 hip-hop hit, "Rapper's Delight." Now why can't Tony Villar have a cool special talent? Uh, aside from that one.

Villaraigosa So Far...

Call it a progress report, or some spin for this city to prove Da Mayor has been doing more than just Mirthala Salinas, but a 40-page document from the Mayor's Office entitled Midterm Report 2005-2007: Delivering Results for Los Angeles was released last week and personally handed to various community leaders from around the city at a meeting this past weekend by Deputy Mayor Larry Frank. (The Militant was able to obtain a copy, but the report is available online as a .pdf in the link above). The report enumerates various accomplishments and works-in-progress from Mayor Villar. In the report:

• Sidewalks repaired: 145 miles
• Streets resurfaced: 425 miles
• Potholes filled: 540,833
• Trees trimmed: 147, 209
• Graffiti removed: 35 million sq feet
• New parks opened: 10
• Recreation facilities opened: 20
• New fire stations & training facilities opened: 6
• New libraries opened: 6

In the works-in-progress department, the report indicated that 300 of the 1,000 new LAPD officers promised by Villaraigosa have been added to the force, and according to Frank, 98,000 of the one million trees promised by El Alcalde have been planted (They can reach their goal by re-greening Griffith Park alone). Frank also admittedly attributed the pothole-filling progress to our recent lack of rain (water helps erode the integrity of asphalt), and jokingly stated that "we might run out of potholes to fill."

But Frank mentioned some interesting factoids on Los Angeles regarding energy and the environment that were news to this Militant, mainly that 60% of Los Angeles' (population: 4,000,000) electricity comes from a coal plant in the Great Basin town of Delta, Utah (population: 3,200). Further Militant research indicated that, according to the town history, "Delta is rather unusual among the primarily agricultural towns in the state, since it was founded in the twentieth century and owed virtually nothing regarding its establishment to direction from the general hierarchy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." The power plant (pictured above) is part of the Intermountain Power Project and run by the Intermountain Power Agency. Seventy-five percent of its power goes to Southern California, which, besides Los Angeles, also juices-up the cities of Anaheim, Riverside, Pasadena, Burbank and Glendale (The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, whose stadium once sold its naming rights to an energy company, has their Triple-A Minor League affiliate based in Utah. Coincidence?). Frank mentioned that the Mayor more than doubled the amount of renewable energy sold by the DWP - from 3% to a whopping 8%. Frank did mention to the community leaders (and not mentioned in the report) that the City is working out some deal with companies in China to create training and manufacturing opportunities to build solar energy panels locally. Fingers crossed...

Shield Us From Destruction!
The Militant finds humor in repetition, cliches, the predictable. So on Saturday on his way to the Pilibos School in Little Armenia for the LACommons event he spotted one of those little FilmLA filming notices posted in front of an apartment building for a shoot on Tuesday. Gee, that's cool they're filming in this neighborhood, I just hope it's anything but The Shiel...D'oh!

City of (Thai) Angels

The long- awaited Thai Town Gateway was inaugurated this morning in a ceremony on a cordoned-off Hollywood Boulevard with a sizeable number of politicians, city staffers and community folk in attendance.
The project was spearheaded by the non-profit organization Thai Community Development Center (Thai CDC) which took six years to come to fruition.

The statue depicts a 6-foot tall bronze apsonsi, which is a guardian angel figure from traditional Thai folklore ("apson" being Thai for "angel" and "si" meaning "lion"). Situated on the southeast corner of Hollywood and Western, the statue will be joined by another sister which will be installed across The Boulevard, and two more sisters which will be placed on the eastern end of Thai Town near Hollywood and Normandie. The apsonsi were all made in Thailand and were transported to Los Angeles gratis by Thai Airways.

Speaking of Thailand, the name of its capital, Bangkok, is an abbreviated form of a phrase which is translated as "City of The Angels." So I need not explain the obvious similarity to El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles del Rio Porcincula. There are efforts to designate Bangkok as Los Angeles' 22nd Sister City, but the Thai capital already shares her wardrobe and goes shopping with the U.S. Capitol, Washington D.C. Still, with EPDNSLRDLADRP being the largest concentration of Thais outside of Thailand, the sister city boosters are trying to get D.C. to find anotha sista.

After comments by Councilman Eric Garcetti, Thai CDC Executive Director Chanchanit Martorell, Mayor Antonio Villar and Thai Consul General Jurk Boon-Long, the stragglers who stayed at the end were treated to some free Thai chow courtesy of Palms Thai Restaurant. Unfortunately, the great Kavee Thongpricha, a.k.a. Thai Elvis, was not present to grace us in song.

The unexpected highlight of the event happened while Garcetti was speaking at the podium, three gang wannabe-looking teenagers in black baggy clothes spotted Da Mayor, suddenly got star-struck and shouted, "YO! MR. MAYOR!" pointing and waving at him, one even took off his shirt. They did this about three times, and after the formal ceremony Da Mayor posed for pictures with them. They seemed to trip out at the fact that El Alcalde even acknowledged their presence, and even gave each other congratulatory high-fives and fist-pounds after their impromptu photo shoot with Antonio. Then one of the teens made some reference to his recent marital problems and shouted towards Da Mayor's way as he was leaving and said, "Blame it on ADHD, it's not your fault, Mr. Mayor!"