Sunday morning, I woke up with a text from a neighbor. Someone had ransacked his converted garage, recently remodeled for reality TV. He wondered if I heard anything or thought who might be responsible. He later sent me a video from his next-door-neighbor showing a masked, gloved, backpack wearing prowler at 2am. He said…
On a weekend we started again to go down to Koreatown for food. Before the pandemic we went all over the city to find great things to eat, places to explore, neighborhoods to walk around. Now you drive along the Hollywood Freeway and there are piles of garbage up and down the hills, tent encampments,…
“The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) implemented the Standard Plan Program to provide LADBS customers a simplified permitting process for the design and construction of ADUs that are built repeatedly. The use of standard plans reduces the time required for plan check resulting in faster permit issuance. Under the Standard Plan Program, plans…
On Sunday I went to Burbank to take photos of a 25-year-old actor. We met at Chili John’s, a “World Famous” landmark, now out-of-business, a spot of streamline slickness with a neon sign, all of its recent Covid signs still intact. Somewhere I had read that preservationists were fighting developers on this site but could…
as told by John M. Thompson to Here in Van Nuys “Just wanted to share the great news. We’ve finally taken the plunge! We’re building an ADU, a second house in our backyard. I’m 61, and you know freelance graphic designer and the wife is on disability so we’ve been thinking how can we make money in…
In my first new short story in three years, “They Didn’t Believe Me,” a progressive politician is unwittingly poisoned with the help of her ambitious assistant in a bizarre plot to upend an election. A noir satire with sci-fi touches, the tale dramatizes the modern ills of urban America where public virtue signaling is often…
