"Sierra La Verne Country Club is closing Sunday, here’s what the city is doing in response"

Daily Bulletin:

“We can’t require them to continue to irrigate everything, but there are certain things that we can do under our current code,” Eric Scherer, La Verne’s community development director, said. “There is enough language in our code that we feel we can make sure it can be relatively kept up and kept clean.”

...

The 1,600 feet of fencing installed without the proper permits remains an issue, Scherer said, and the City Attorney’s Office is working on getting it removed.

...

The site cannot be sold to a residential developer because the land is currently designated “open space” under the city’s general plan, its blueprint for development, Scherer said. The designation prohibits any development on the property.

...

“I can guarantee you at this point in time, I’ll go to my grave saying, ‘No development up there,’” Mayor Don Kendrick said.

South Philadelphia councilman introduced a bill "that would ban balconies and bay windows"

Philly:

For some homeowners in the market for newly constructed homes, balconies and bump-out bay windows offer two things that a traditional rowhouse can’t: additional space and light.

Other people see these architectural features as a defining symbol of gentrification — bringing with it anxieties about cost-of-living increases and displacement. And yet others worry that the features disrupt the appearance and character of older blocks.

"Meet the anonymous artist installing bus benches at neglected stops on L.A.’s Eastside"

LAT:

On a Sunday afternoon earlier this month, I find him at Valley and Soto, laying out slabs of wood and power tools. He is decked out in a bright waq’ollo mask typical of the Peruvian Andes (imagine a balaclava with a mustachioed face embroidered on it). The mask is to protect his identity; he prefers to remain anonymous.

Over the past 11 months, the artist has surreptitiously installed more than a dozen wood benches around the Eastside, and he has it down to a science: He props a ladder next to the bus sign, slips a handmade wooden bench over the pole and proceeds to screw, hammer and glue it into place. In about 15 minutes, the stop has a brand-new bus bench.

...

getting a bench or a shelter installed at a bus stop in the city of Los Angeles requires a frustrating level of red tape.

Any street furniture has to first be approved by the Los Angeles City Council. After that, a single bus bench travels through an extensive permitting process, requiring approval from the Department of Public Works, as well as eight — eight! — other city agencies including the Department of City Planning, the Bureau of Engineering, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Bureau of Street Lighting. Nearby property owners also have a say.

"The Camp Fire was inevitable. It is the event that so many dreaded for so long."

ER:

People prepared. Fire prevention officials planned. They drilled. They worked with homeowners. They invented fire-safe councils and Fire on the Ridge and sent fire prevention officials to schools via a program called Fire Pals. They raised money to keep fire lookouts open when the state said it wouldn’t.

Eventually, geography and topography proved to be the trap everyone thought it was.

Paradise and Magalia sit on top of a pine-studded ridge between several canyons. There are very few subdivisions. Instead, homes are built one at a time and tucked into trees. Fly over the area in a helicopter and those trees stand like matchsticks surrounding well-hidden homes.

"A former Texaco station in Silver Lake could be on its way to landmark status"

Curbed:

That was unwelcome news for the property’s owner, who applied for permits earlier this year to demolish the gas station and replace it with a 14-unit apartment building

...

“We need more housing more than we need a non-working gas station,”

"'In the 1950s,' Bertaud writes, 'China established a regulation requiring that at least one room in each apartment receive a minimum of one hour of sunshine on the day of the winter solstice, December 21'"

“even though the rule no longer applies, its impact on the spatial structure of Chinese cities remains.”

"A condemned house in Northern California with holes in the roof and mildew in the pipes sold last month for $1.23 million"

LAT:

The three-bedroom, two-bath house closed $230,000 over the asking price on March 30, Gallegos said.

"There are so many 20-year-old millionaires in the area that it really didn't surprise me," he said.

Old-guard environmentalists are fighting new housing in California

ML:

Although [the director of Sierra Club California] says she supports infill development around mass transit, it’s hard for her to locate an actual place in California where she supports new buildings. This is also true of the Bay Area chapter, which in recent years has opposed the 8 Washington condo tower near the Embarcadero, the redevelopment of Treasure Island and the Hunters Point Shipyard, the expansion of Park Merced, and the new Golden State Warriors stadium. Recently, the chapter opposed a 66-unit development in the Western Addition because it would replace an auto repair shop it deemed historic.

With regard to upzoning near transit, [the director]rules out Sacramento, where some neighborhoods, she thinks, would use upzoning as an excuse to block new transit, concealing what she calls “racist” reasons under a civilized veneer. Nor does she think it’s appropriate in more outlying areas like Folsom, where a transit stop under the bill would lead to an upzoning too near wilderness areas. She doesn’t think it’s a good idea in San Diego, where taller buildings would block views of the ocean, nor does she support it in major cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco, where “people who live in rent-controlled buildings worry about bigger and bigger buildings coming toward them.”

"[Marin] County officials recently rejected all 10 applications for licenses to operate medical marijuana dispensaries"

SFC:

That’s despite the fact that nearly 70 percent of Marin voters approved Proposition 64, the 2016 initiative that legalized recreational cannabis

...

Because Marin officials had hinged all future commercial activities related to adult use on how the medical applications worked out, the rejection means the county is guaranteed to be almost totally devoid of marijuana shops for the foreseeable future

Anti-development propaganda

Growth opponents’ least convincing argument: “...think of the tourists!!” pic.twitter.com/oPEeUWySgL

— Terrifying Density (@SFyimby) October 28, 2017

“High rises ... threaten us with holocaust...” at a time when actual Holocaust survivors were very much still alive. pic.twitter.com/bGPbDC0Jxw

— Terrifying Density (@SFyimby) October 28, 2017

"Thousands displaced by Northern California's wildfires now face the region's housing shortage"

LAT:

Even before the fire, 15,000 people were on wait lists for Burbank Housing homes.

...

A passenger rail service connecting cities in Marin and Sonoma counties that opened this summer has boosted hopes of traffic relief and more home building along the transit corridor. But the region has been having trouble attracting drivers to operate the trains because housing costs are too high

Charlotte residents fighting to make tiny homes illegal

CA:

People who live nearby have complained to the City Council that the tiny houses don’t fit in with the surrounding community, and could drive down property values.

“It is an extremely niche product being put in the wrong place at the wrong time without any vetting,” neighbor Robert Wilson told the council, adding that a real estate company told them that tiny houses could drop their property values by as much as 30 percent.

“These type houses do not belong in Coulwood Hills … We formally request that the City halt his expansion into our neighborhood.”

"Despite clear risks, Santa Rosa neighborhood that burned down was exempt from fire regulations"

LAT:

Because it was outside the officially mapped “very severe” hazard zone, more than five miles to the east, Coffey Park was exempt from regulations designed to make buildings fire resistant in high-risk areas.

...

“With a lot of hazard mapping, once you get into a density of development, it’s mapped urban and it’s considered unburnable,”

Link roundup

1. "Is Celebrity Photographer Tyler Shields Inspired, Or Copying Other Artists?"

This level of success is surprising, given that a glance at his portfolio by anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the history of photography would reveal that a high number of his images look an awful lot like those of other photographers. And not obscure photographers, either.

2. From a review of Oxenfree:

It’s very much a game where the play turns out to be in how you handle your relationship with these four other characters. Like, i played through the game, trying to make the right choices, trying to win and ‘be nice’ (you can’t rewind– you can’t load previous saves and you have to make choices quickly), and then at the end it was like “All four characters HATE you.” Or actually it was worse than that– it was like “only 14% of people who played this game had all four characters HATE them.” 14%? Really??

3. "Last July, the Beverly Hills City Council voted to modify the city’s historic preservation ordinance, thereby making it easier to demolish buildings that were at one point deemed 'historic.'"

Link roundup

1.  LA Times:

City officials are building a small park in Harbor Gateway with the main purpose of forcing 33 registered sex offenders to move out of a nearby apartment building.

State law prohibits sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a park or school. By building the park, officials said, they would effectively force the sex offenders to leave the neighborhood.

2.  Another good article in the latest ESPN magazine, about the baseball player evaluation statistic WAR:

WAR tells a new story about baseball. Better, WAR shows that new story, because it embeds every part of the game within its formula. Consider shortstop David Eckstein. The mainstream story about Eckstein -- he's small and not technically very good, but boy does he have grit -- was told through adjectives, not facts. At the media-criticism site Fire Joe Morgan, there was a David Eckstein category comprising 20 separate posts on Eckstein hagiographies. That's nearly 12,000 (hysterical) words mocking the reporters who celebrated the plucky Eckstein despite his weak arm, punchless bat and general failure to be athletic.

Now, here's the twist: David Eckstein was actually very valuable, and it had nothing to do with the adjectives. In 2002 Eckstein (WAR of 4.4, according to analytics-based website FanGraphs) was almost as good as Miguel Tejada (WAR of 4.7), who won the AL MVP award that year. Tejada hit 34 home runs and drove in 131. But Eckstein was nearly his equal while driving in 63 and taking a running start every time he threw to first. How? WAR, and the components that it comprises, tells us:

1. Eckstein let himself get hit by 27 pitches, giving him a better OBP than Tejada and blunting Tejada's power advantage. 2 . Eckstein hit into a third as many double plays. 3. Eckstein was actually a good defensive shortstop with more range than Tejada and more success turning double plays.

A writer who wanted to praise Eckstein, then, could have made some assumptions about Eckstein based on his height, weight and skin color (white), collected some flattering athlete-cliche quotes from Eckstein's teammates and flipped through his thesaurus looking for new words -- thaumaturgical! leptosome! -- to describe the little guy. Or he could have started with WAR and explained how David Eckstein, ballplayer, was good at playing ball.

3.   From ESPN's lengthy profile of Michael Jordan:

In the late '80s, Jordan looked in Whitfield's closet and saw that half of it was filled with Nike and the other half filled with Puma. Jordan bundled the Puma gear in his arms, tossing it onto the living room floor. He took a knife from the kitchen and cut it to shreds. Call Howard White, his contact at Nike, he told Fred, and tell him to replace it all. Same thing happened with George. He bought a pair of New Balance shoes he loved, and Jordan saw them one day and insisted he hand them over. Call Howard White at Nike.

And

In case anyone in the inner circle forgets who's in charge, they only have to recall the code names given to them by the private security team assigned to overseas trips. Estee is Venom. George is Butler. Yvette is Harmony. Jordan is called Yahweh -- a Hebrew word for God.