Before Susan Evans goes into retirement from government work at the end of the year, moving north with her husband to become a ranching/vineyard couple, an assessment of her term in Culver City would be appropriate. She will be leaving after nearly four years as the Community Development Director on Dec. 15. On the same day, her husband, Les, retires as the city manager of a South Bay community. Perhaps in preparation for her new lifestyle, Ms. Evans, who formerly drove what some would call a luxury car, lately has been seen behind the wheel of a Ford pickup truck. While the City Council has begun discussing a recruitment campaign for a new king or queen of redevelopment, in fact the Council will be sidelined for the rest of the time. In a test of Culver Citys revised Charter, the new director will be chosen by City manager Jerry Fulwood instead of the City Council. How that plays out will be closely watched around City Hall. No one doubts Mr. Fulwoods ability to make a correct choice, but how will the veteran members of the City Council react from their unfamiliar perch on the sidelines? Insiders have suggested that there are two early in-house candidates, Todd Tipton, Ms. Evans principal associate, and planner Thomas Gorman. That is another drama that will build over the next several months. Although hardly anyone heard Ms. Evans elevate her voice after she was hired in January of 03 to replace Marcia Rood, she shortly emerged in the top tier of the citys most influential personalities. A well-known critic who has sparred courteously with Ms. Evans on numerous occasions told thefrontpageonline.com, I admire her tenacity but not her attitude. Susans approach was, I am the developer. I know what is best. Shes like Rood and all who came before her. Susan always knew best. That is not how I think a city should be run. Ms. Evans full-term profile is complicated. For all of the prominent persons who agreed with her philosophy of building large, building frequently, making the chronically stodgy Downtown breathe freely, critics said that individual business and property owners were treated too insensitively. They were regarded as mere impediments in the path of progress.
4 Culver High Students Earn Arts Scholarships
Four art students from Culver City High School have been selected by USC’s Ryman Arts to participate in their fall semester art classes. The students, Enrique Serrano, Kenny Muhamedagic, Zoe Ahearn and Noel Ekker, are members of the school’s prestigious Academy of Visual and Performing Arts These intensive beginning, intermediate and advanced classes in both painting and drawing are held on Saturdays in the USC Roski School of Fine Arts studios. The classes are designed specifically for high school students exhibiting talent in the visual arts. Last spring, Mr. Ekker, Ms. Ahearn, Mr. Muhamedagic and Mr. Serrano were recommended by a teacher and/or a professional artist. They applied to the Ryman program with a portfolio and an essay about their goals as artists. The students only recently found out they had been accepted.
Mommy, Theyre Picking on Me Cause Im a Girl
Culver Citily speaking, isn’t it ironic that on the day Susan Evans’ honorable departure as chief of redevelopment is announced that a girl misfit in the Los Angeles Fire Dept. sits on the curb and cries her eyes out? Her ice cream cone melted. “Mommy, they are picking on me again ‘cause I’m a girl.” Fire Capt. Alicia Mathis sounds like a pip who should be heading a one-woman housecleaning service on the moon. How would you like to be saddled with this babe close enough to breathe on you every day in the workplace? Some people have their tribulations now. Others, later. Alicia Babe, a 17-year veteran, has enough age on her to know better. But she doesn’t. Taking time out from her busy and obviously important life, Alicia Babe, utilizing debatable femininity, gracefully ascended the steps of Los Angeles City Hall yesterday morning. Illustrations of her presumably un-masculine ascension are not expected to bob up next month in Playboy. Field and Stream maybe. Demonstrating before the world that she can’t take a joke, Alicia Babe declared that she has forwarded a bulky complaint to the California Dept. of Fair Housing and Employment. Using one hand to keep her face straight, Alicia Babe, in her best, stentorian Gloria Allred tones, opened with a harumph, the way fat, old Major Hoople did in the funny pages when Alicia Babe was even more of a girl. Alicia Babe could have saved the boys in the media precious time by truncating her gripe into those 11 beautiful words: “Mommy, they are picking on me again ‘cause I’m a girl.” Whatta guy you are, Alicia Babe? The kind of he-woman I wish I were lucky enough to serve with but, fortunately, never have married.
Susan Evans Is Leaving She Forged a Dynamic and Whirlwind Run at City Hall
Susan Evans, a powerful force for spectacular redevelopment in Culver City since arriving from Burbank almost three years ago, is departing as Community Development Director. To say it succinctly, supporters of Ms. Evans contend that she has done more to improve, to change, the face of Culver City via redevelopment than any single person since founder Harry Culver almost a century ago. Better than a dreamer, professional friends say, she is a visionary supremely confident in her ability to effect broad and lasting changes. Ms. Evans has criss-crossed Culver City with bold, sweeping strokes. Supporters say the city is far better off today than when she arrived because Ms. Evans, in contrast to conservative predecessors, thought and acted like a CEO. This is highly unusual, they say, in a government structure where bureaucracy dominates while independence is discouraged. Soft of voice, medium of height with tall blonde hair, she moved with the unrelenting speed and purposefulness of a sprinter on fire. Culver City was not sure for a long time what to make of Ms. Evans. It still may not be clear how it feels about the woman who, privately, loves to celebrate the half-dozen far-reaching projects under way at all times during her tenure. Her public image was an intriguing mix of darting dynamics. Her personality portfolio included a retiring persona, laconic ways and a resolute strength of character that forbade her to show even a hint of emotion when critics employed strong terms or questioned her motives. The permanently unruffleable Ms. Evans never had to shop for critics in the classifieds. At least figuratively, they were lined up outside her door on the third floor of City Hall. Ms. Evans departs at the height of her influence, days before workmen begin carving the deepest imprint she will make on Culver City the massive reshaping of the commercial middle of the community, the heart of Downtown. The Culver Studios is scheduled soon to begin building a futuristic structure ground-floor retail businesses and offices in the upper stories across the street from the Culver Hotel, on the site of the Trader Joes parking lot. Washington Boulevard, which has wended in front of the hotel since the 1990s, will be closed off. Traffic will be permanently rerouted while a large, showplace, European-style plaza is built. Friends said Ms. Evans is retiring to Northern California with her husband,,,
Black Is Beautiful, but Nigger Is Not
What a strange world we inhabit where:
- Point I: Erin Aubrey Kaplan, a black woman with virulently racist convictions, makes a provocative suggestion this morning in her weekly essay in the Los Angeles Times. She argues that you honkies are saying the notorious King/Drew Medical Center is a failure because it is a black institution and you are anti-black.
- Point II: The New York Times, which loves to titillate readers with racial pornography, predictably has joined the crowd of East Coast liberals vowing to destroy the re-election campaign of U.S. Sen. George Allen of Virginia. The crowd is furious with Mr. Allen, a son of the late coach of the Rams. They say that after Mr. Allen learned within the past month, at age 54, that he is a Jew, he was too slow to cop to being a Jew. The crowd also is mad at him because he is a conservative and openly religious. The subject of discrediting Mr. Allen arose again yesterday. The New York Times reported that two people who claimed they knew the senator in his younger days suddenly had miraculous twin visions. The race-conscious Times identified two white fellows who claimed they used to know the senator, one in the 1970s, one in the 1980s. It seems that both Democrats recalled that on one occasion Mr. Allen disparaged blacks. In its eagerness to savage Mr. Allen, the politically correct Times charged that Mr. Allen uttered a bad word, which it could not repeat because it fears offending black liberals. The word is nigger.
Tap, Tap: I Still Am Waiting for One Culver City Muslim Apology
Sadly, my good colleague Frederik Sisa remains unconvinced that the threat to the world by a sizable segment of Muslim society is anything more substantive than a sophomoric prank by President Bush, his mortal adversary. It would be easier to prove to Mr. Sisa and his fellow skeptics the earth is flat. That would be bad enough. In response to my call for members of the King Fahad Mosque of Culver City to stand up like moral men, plant their feet and speak out against Muslim terrorists, Mr. Sisa became an apologist for dishonest Muslims. He wrote at length about several un-credible Muslim groups issuing fatwas. Meaningless. That is crouching behind organizational skirts. It shows cowardice not strength or moral leadership or accountability. The evidence of apologies Mr. Sisa offered in his latest essay (The Myth of Muslim Silence, 25 Sept.) would not stand up in a courtroom run by either the former Police Chief Ted Cooke or by the late Buster Brown. Hundreds of gentlemen pray regularly at the King Fahad. Where are leaders today? You know where they are. Okay, fellows, who will be the first to raise his hand, publicly and speak out? Do not do it while standing behind a telephone pole or in a cornfield 50 miles from the next human being. Condemn what your thousands of criminal brothers are perpetrating. Just as with my synagogue and with your church, there is a hierarchy within the mosque. Whether it starts with the imam or someone else, surely there is one legitimate member of the mosque, a gentleman with detectable gravitas, who will demonstrate the moral muscle to take a brave stand. I am not interested in hearing a squeaky mea culpa, you will forgive the linguistic diversion, from the member of the King Fahad with the least standing. As of this moment, every gentleman of stature at the King Fahad is behaving in the manner of the uncourageous Mr. Cooke. He became infamous in his last days as Police Chief for diving under his roomy second-floor desk at the Police Station when he heard that I was on the other end of the telephone line.
Homeless Helpers Have Tougher Lives Than the Homeless
Those twinkle-eyed rascals on the City Council, frustrated showmen that they are, dipped into their bag of magic tricks at last nights meeting. The plum they pulled out bombed. They engineered an off-beat magic trick. Somehow, they proved that trying to help the homeless is even more complex, more exasperating, more bureaucratic than actually being homeless. This may have been the first time such a magic trick was engineered in public. Plainly, men and women who are homeless lead much less complicated lives than do the divided members of the City Council. Having assigned themselves the not-so-lofty task of appointing 4 volunteer residents to a committee that will periodically debate the plight of the homeless, the members of the Council drew back and tabled the matter for a month. How and why they reached that point is something of a political jigsaw puzzle. Contradicting and confounding experts on homelessness, the City Council, in the words of Vice Mayor Alan Corlin, determined that geography trumped compassion when it came to helping the homeless. A few Monday nights ago, the City Council concluded that four neighborhoods of Culver City needed to devote more attention to homeless persons wandering into their streets.
The Myth of Muslim Silence
At the heart of the recent United American Committee (UAC) hullabaloo regarding the King Fahad Mosque is the myth that Muslims have been silent about terrorism and Osama bin Laden, or have not issued any fatwas. But this is false.
In July, 2005, the Fiqh Council of North America and the Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a fatwa against terrorism. You can read it at http://cair.com/FatwaJuly2005.pdf. Note that the King Fahad Mosque is listed among entities endorsing the fatwa.
Internationally, the Islamic Commission of Spain issued in March, 2005 the first fatwa against Osama bin Laden himself: http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/spanish_fatwa_against_terrorism/
On its website, the Muslim Public Affairs Council wrote in response to one of bin Ladens messages: The Muslim Public Affairs Council today expressed its outrage at the latest message by Osama bin Laden declaring war against the whole world, including Muslims who disagree with his narrow and destructive ideology… bin Laden’s distortions of core Islamic concepts such as jihad and defense of the Prophet Muhammad are merely a religious cloak for his nefarious and selfish political motives global Muslim leaders should reject bin Laden’s false claims of leadership. (http://www.mpac.org/article.php?id=157)
Culver City Exclusive: ‘the Worst Abuse of Power in Law Enforcement’
Sweeping complaints of “bizarre behavior” relating to the King Fahad Mosque, an officer overseeing inside information on the mosque, and a former police chief apparently led to the disbanding of the special Narcotics Unit of the Culver City Police Dept. three years ago. The seething charges were leveled by a member of the decertified team in a 12-paragraph letter of grievance obtained by thefrontpageonline.com. In addition to allegations against since-retired Lt. Bruce Unuora and still-active Sgt. Larry Moroso, the letter raises numerous questions about the Police Dept.’s tightly guarded, highly mysterious relationship with the King Fahad Mosque. “The official reason the drug team was dropped,” the letter-writer told this newspaper, “was budget cutbacks. How convenient for (retired Police Chief Ted) Cooke. By ending the unit and reassigning us, this allowed Cooke to save face and not have to initiate an investigation into our allegations. These were serious charges. Unuora should have been placed on paid administrative leave and sent home immediately. An investigation should have been opened as soon as we met with (now Asst. Police Chief Hank) Davies. Eunora was doing goofy things that were not right. But nothing happened to him. I don’t know why. The serious allegations we brought should have prompted a ranking officer in the department to start an investigation if Davies would not do it. In any other department, somebody would have taken action. There were so many irregularities. Real shenanigans. They weren’t a secret, either. I can’t count them. There is plenty of blame. And don’t get me started about gun permits. I cannot see any police chief in any department in the country giving gun permits to members of the most radical mosque west of the Mississippi after 9/11 (King Fahad). Cooke did. Now whether, or how much, any of this had to do with the private deal that Cooke’s security company had with the mosque, I don’t know. Lots of funny business there.” As a result of the kill-off of the Police Dept. drug team, Culver City’s 125-member department is believed to be the only law enforcement agency of its size in the region without a special narc unit. “This surely is not because the drug problem in Culver City has gone away,” said an officer with a sense of irony. Until 2003, Culver City had an active Narc Unit for at least 30 years, even though it shrank to one officer for a 4-month period late in 1996. “This is just a preview, just a hint, of the spectacular problems created and caused by Cooke,” said an insider. The retired but still visible chief was alternately feared, admired and dreaded, some persons say, “almost equally,” at City Hall and throughout the department for his assertedly punitive style of management. Sources said officers’ attitudes toward the chief “depended on whether they were in or out of his favor at the moment.” Mr. Cooke fashioned a life-sized heroic legend of himself during 27 years as Police Chief before retiring 3 years ago. He was widely regarded as the most powerful figure in the community, “beyond the reach of the rules,” one veteran said. “Nobody could, or would, touch him.”
Activist Henry Siegel Dies at 93
Henry Siegel, who together with his wife Adele formed a team known around the Westside as aggressive activists for the cause of peace for more than 60 years, died last Monday night. He was 93 years old. While stumping unremittingly for unapologetically liberal causes in the pursuit of peace, Mr. Siegel and Mrs. Siegel attracted wide admiration for their hardiness and for their longevity. He was and she is unrelenting in their political convictions. A familiar sight throughout the community, they made occasional public appearances in recent years, almost always together, at meetings of the City Council and the School Board. From their seats, they would advocate dearly held, peace-based causes. The family can be contacted at 310.838.8513 for the date and details regarding a celebration of Mr. Siegels life. They were married for 69 years, and often had talked about how they were looking forward to their landmark 70th. With Mrs. Siegel taking the lead, they bookmarked their entry into the new world of political activism with the period that they moved into their lifetime home on Braddock Drive. This was in the middle 1940s, near the end of World War II. Friends said that Mr. Siegel, the more taciturn partner, seemed more comfortable taking a role slightly deeper in the background.