Lincoln Place: TENT CITY REPORT
By C.V.
Beck
Tent City is once a week, on
Saturdays, from 10 am to 5 pm, California and Frederick Streets, southwest
corner. We are located behind the Ross/Ralphs parking lot in what we call the
free speech area, or Squirrel Square.
We have delicious, unhealthful snax and
chat all day long and have a few yuks, if at all possible in our situation. In
litigation this month at 8:30 a.m., June 5, in Malibu Courthouse, Civic Center
Way, Judge Cesar Sarmiento’s courtroom W, AIMCO v. Group E, the Lincoln
Place Tenant’s Association attorneys’ Jan Book and Amanda Seward,
and AIMCO’s attorneys, Greguar Ozhekim and Linda Hollenbeck, will be
having a status conference to determine next steps and dates thereof, leading to
a long-awaited trial. The CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) matter is
not expected to be heard prior to August or September,
2006.
This month, one of our tenants
who had moved, has returned to help us set up Tent City regularly. Thank you,
Tom Torres, for your help. Tom has described our situation as that of
“corporate avarice.”
At the
beginning of the month of May, Bill Rosendahl and Mark Antonio Grant stopped by
to see us. Bill said that the Lincoln Place situation is “an albatross
around AIMCO’s neck”...I was so glad to hear this, I went home and
looked up the poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
on the internet. (Cheered me up, considerable, it
did.)
Also this month, AIMCO has
“reappeared” to certain “selected” members of the Venice
Community in what is going to be a series of semi-private/semi-public (?)
meetings at chic watering holes. (I decline to say “up-scale,” lest
I blow chunks). In the course of which meeting, the new AIMCO guy, Charles
McPhee (formerly of Catellus, now known as Prologis, even bigger than what was
called “the Octopus”) wants to take the pulse of the neighborhoods
of Venice, (or perhaps give us a reverse blood transfusion), to see what should
be done with/to Lincoln Place. Oddly enough, no one from Lincoln Place seemed to
have been invited.
I finally ran into
the guy from the Department of Agriculture, Weights and Measures, who has been
putting out the fruit fly traps in the trees forever. He was so surprised to see
someone here, and I was equally surprised to see him, too, after fifteen years
of not seeing him. He asked me if I was the owner? I said no, and I gave him a
Beachhead to read, to clarify his mind and set it at
ease.
The roses in the backyard are
better than they have ever been! I have been feeding them banana peels. In case
you didn’t know, roses love banana peels and now, you know what to do with
your leftover ones. See you next month.
Posted: Fri - June 1, 2007 at 08:00 PM