It was quite an eventful July, in both good and bad ways. Mostly good, but the bad is still very significant. Daryl Nickens, a wonderful screenwriter, mentor and person lost his battle with cancer. His passing came as a shock to a lot of us. I had exchanged emails with him just a couple of weeks before, and he seemed to be in good spirits. He will be missed by many people, and my thoughts are with his family.
The heat finally broke this week. Everyone knows that the brutal heat wave seemed to hit Southern California worst of all. It got up to 119 degrees in the Valley, and rarely dropped below 103 here in the city. It was hard enough to get ANY work done, so there was no way I was going to sit around and sweat over a keyboard to add to a blog. Unfortunately, regular trips to the beach didn't help one bit. It was 100 right on the waterfront. Ugh.
Speaking of the beach, the LA Times has been running a
series on oceanic changes that is an absolute must-read, no matter where you live. Anyone who frequents the beach has noticed some major "issues" at the waterfront. Here in LA, the dreaded "red tides" have increased dramatically in frequency and intensity only in the time that I've lived here. This series offers an explanation for many of these occurances, and it's pretty damn scary. I'm talking An Inconvenient Truth scary.
In better news, I just got word that two close homies are going to be making moves at the end of the year. I won't mention you guys by name, since I know you haven't told many people (including in one case, your boss), but one good friend will find himself moving from NYC to London for at least a year, while another will be moving from NYC out here to LA! I'm really proud of my boy for the opportunity he's receiving in England, and I'm absolutely THRILLED that one of my Brooklyn guys is going to be out here by the end of the year. It's a bit sad to see the New York delegation shrinking, but plenty of the fellas will still be there to hold down the fort.
I have friends and associates in cities all over the world. But it's funny how the vast majority of my very closest friends are congregated in such a small group of cities. Basically New York, LA, Washington, DC, Minneapolis/St. Paul and a couple of stragglers up in San Francisco. My family is almost all located in NYC metro (including Jersey, Long Island, etc.) and down in the Hampton/Virginia Beach area or Virginia. My heir land is in North Carolina, but I've been there only once since my teenage years, for my father's funeral. Planning the Thanksgiving holiday now, and it's looking like I'll be spending it in Hampton (visiting mom), with a little side trip up to DC to both get caught up with some folks and to take my daughter to some of the Smithsonian museums. My career started as a Smithsonian, then Smithsonian Magazine intern, so I can't wait to show her around the museums.
Speaking of my daughter, Mackenzie turns the big 8 on Saturday. Man, these kids grow up fast! Going to pick up her gift this afternoon.
And finally, the tides of progress seem to be going full speed ahead here in LA. Construction is underway on not one, but TWO new Metro rail lines. The first line is an extention of the Gold line from downtown east into East LA. The second is the brand new Exposition Line, which originates in downtown and travels west, through USC (yaay!), Exposition Park (yaay!), the Crenshaw district (yaay!), and terminates in Culver City. If having Metro access to USC, the Coliseum, the Expo Park museums and the Crenshaw District wasn't good enough, this will be the first Metro line to travel west of the 405, and plans call for a phase 2 that goes into Santa Monica.
It's refreshing to see the city buying into mass transit. One of the more interesting things I've read in the past couple of weeks is news about the many new residential developments popping up around Metro stations. One particular high-rise, a condo building across the street from the Wilshire/Western Metro station, would be a great buy for city dwellers, if not for the fact that units will start at $700,000 and top off at $2.5 million. Anyone who has been in the Wilshire/Western area knows that those prices are nuckin' futs. Who can afford that? And why would the people who COULD afford it move to the Wilshire and Western instead of Hancock Park, Laurel Canyon, Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, or Venice? It's like for every step forward in urban development, there always has to be two steps back. Thanks a lot greedy real estate developers.
