Ladies and ladies. Or is it gentlemen and gentlemen? We are well past due in paying head-dipping tribute to the marbled honesty of America’s gallant gay and lesbian leaders. Bravely, they have remained unswervingly true to their moral principles. They have stubbornly fought off tempting overtures in the face of steaming-hot pressure ever since the gay lobby most reluctantly became nationally focused in 1982. Resisting tear-stained pleas from supporters within the gay community to widen their agenda and present their lifestyle as a legitimate alternative to the way normal people live, gay leaders staunchly have stood their ground unblinkingly. No, no, a hundred times no, gay leaders have told huge crowds over the past twenty-four years. We will not present ourselves as more than we are. Greedy, we are not. Ordinary folk, that is all we are. Blacks? Now there are victims. Native Americans? They are victim, too. Us? We’re just normal people. Monks are our models. We admire — yea, dare I say we envy? — the modesty of these ascetic rascals who ask so little from life. Like the monastic types, we seek neither recognition nor acclaim. We just wish to be left alone. Almost. All we want is a sliver of respect from the non-gay crowd. Just because we are different from you all, we are not a threat to you, and we would appreciate it if you would not try to get us fired when you find out we are working next to you. That is all we want…
Young Man Is Worried
The pressure of serving, voluntarily, as the neighborhood watchdog is beginning to irritate Bob Young, who is no kid and no stranger to a labor he really does love. The newest annoyance in his neighborhood is at least several weeks old, alleged employees of a certain telecom company reportedly wandering uncomfortably close to intimate areas of the properties of him and his neighbors. “I think a scam is going on,” said Mr. Young, a retiree. “I can’t prove it, yet. I don’t know what their game is, but something is wrong.”
The Sentry of the Century
Mr. Young has lived in the same house on Motor Avenue, south of Culver Boulevard, since 1938. For all of his adult years, he has, effectively, stood as a sentry guarding his property. Now that he is retired, his remarkably keen eyes, trained to a professional sharpness, roam his neighborhood daily for the smallest, most nuanced hint of trouble. Bad guys, or intruders thinking about turning bad, should know about Mr. Young’s reputation, and record, before they poke into property that isn’t their own.
San Gennaro Gets a Face-Drop
While the chattering denizens of Downtown businesses continued to speculate this morning over whether a retail enterprise or another eatery will replace the dearly departed hub restaurant San Gennaro Café, a far more dramatic pageant was playing out inside.
Was There a Shipwreck?
As of late yesterday afternoon, the spacious main dining room of the evicted restaurant resembled a glassy-eyed punch-drunk prizefighter who had been knocked to the floor for the count. Unmistakably, thousands of dollars in damage had been rained on the property sometime after San Gennaro shut down on Sunday night. The room had been hollowed out, but not necessarily with bare hands. Acting on a tip from a legal source, thefrontpageonline.com inspected the premises and found several areas shockingly changed from last weekend’s celebratory closing.
No Friend of Mexicans
When I read the obituary of Clarabelle the Clown yesterday morning, I presumed that meant that the Alameda County Judge Robert Freedman, who killed the high school exit exam last week, no longer was moving among us. Drat the misunderstanding — by the heavenly powers, not by me. The petitioning lawyer successfully argued that the high school exit exam is too tough for poor and minority students to pass even though he himself rose from Latino poverty in a Spanish language home of thirteen children. He seemed to be saying that even though he has achieved a lofty plateau in the world, the present generation of high school kids is too dumb to emulate him. (Why doesn’t an enterprising chap open The Slow School for Poor and Minority Students — Cover 12 Grades in 24 Years or More?)
Union, District Back to Talking?
As Day 4 dawned this morning in the latest impasse in labor talks between the Teachers Union and the School District, the two sides were planning a new negotiating session with their mediator. Feelings of rawness were starting to emerge on both sides. But civility still was in the lead.
There Was No-No in Their Eyes
Nearing the end of their second straight school year without a contract, members of the Teachers Union agreed to a settlement with the School District last Friday only to kill the deal last Monday with a charge that the terms surreptitiously been changed.
Sudden Death for Teachers Contract
This peace won’t last long, did it? Less than four full days.
After two years of chasing each other around the block, the provisional agreement reached last Friday between the Teachers Union and the School District over a new labor contract fell out on Tuesday when the union pulled back.
A Volatile Reaction
The yank-back by the union triggered an explosion of emotions from School District officials — anger, frustration and disgust. “Seems to be business as usual for the Teachers Union,” a District source told thefrontpageonline.com. The School District’s fury was compounded by the fact that this was the second time during extended negotiations — outlasting even the “West Wing” — that union leaders have agreed to terms only to have the deal go into a ditch. District insiders reluctantly have gone into a parade-rest mode, awaiting official notification of the rejection by the leadership of the Teachers Union. The next step remains clouded by uncertainty. A potential autumn strike, alluded to recently by Union executives, looms as a possibility again.
Visiting the Crime Scene
What comprises an ideal crime scene? A secluded area with a victim in sight, says a Culver City law enforcement veteran. Two mornings after a foiled carjacking on Monday, high in the hills of Culver City Park, thefrontpageonline.com visited the crime scene, a picturesque overlook by the baseball fields. Without disturbing a bush or one of the thousands of nearby tree branches, the setting in the upper reaches seems to have been designed for an Agatha Christie novel. The highest ground available in Culver City yields not only a perspective on the flatlands far below but also a smoky, cloudy insight into an upper world dramatically distinct from the community’s popular image.
Making West L.A. Disappear
The Board of (Not Always Trustworthy) Trustees that runs West Los Angeles College sure showed us, didn’t they, bub? Last year, in a regrettable moment of regressive ignorance, the Board planted its foot where Frank Quiambao’s tush usually goes. Unceremoniously, they kicked the best thing ever to happen to West L.A. out of the college president’s chair. All the way into (possibly unredeemable) obscurity. For all I know, Mr. Quiambao is facelessly pumping gas these days somewhere along PCH. His aggressive personality that never allowed him to speak — or move — at less than a hundred miles an hour, plus his insistence on candor, seemed to bother the ladies and gentlemen on the Board of Untrustworthies. For the last twelve — shhh, very quiet — months, West L.A., a mainly minority community college, has reverted to its shameful pre-Quiambao posture. It is as invisible as, oh, say, Albert Vera.
El Carro-jacking Fades to El Floppo
Is it possible that scores of residents were correct several months ago when they argued strenuously that the new Skateboard Park at Culver City Park should be placed in a certain visible area for safety purposes? The worriers ran into a wall of skepticism. But the skeptics may have to apologize. Right or not, the caution expressed by the worriers was validated this week in a most unusual manner.
One lucky visitor to Culver City Park almost had bullets for lunch on Monday, unintentionally, you understand, since ammo never is on the menu. Anyone wandering near the upper area of the sloping park — at the lunch hour — could have glimpsed an attempted carjacking — all in Spanish — that went awry spectacularly.
One Way to Justify Raises
Although the tentative contract settlement reached last Friday between the smoldering members of the Teachers Union and the School District abruptly ended two years of fast-expanding hostility, the winners and losers (if any) remain to be sorted out. While the teachers appeared to get just about everything they had sought, so, evidently, will the School District’s management team. Sources told thefrontpageonline.com yesterday that “many or most” of the small to huge controversial pay hikes the School Board has been considering, will be enacted after all.
The way seems to have been cleared for the School Board to reward the managers with a pure conscience now that the Teachers Union has been taken care of for awhile. Indications are that Dr.Laura McGaughey, retiring in a little more than seventy days as Superintendent of the School District is “highly likely” to received her anticipated whopper of a last-minute raise, twenty-five percent. Her salary would soar from $123,669 to $154,669.
Another likely beneficiary of the contract settlement is Asst. Supt. Patty Jaffe, the hometown favorite to succeed Dr. McGaughey from the moment that the McGaughey retirement was announced last month. At 7.3 percent, Ms. Jaffe would receive one of the more modest increases, from $112,809 to $121,000. If Ms. Jaffe does get the job — the School Board is not breaking the speed limit searching for a successor — she would receive an even larger pay hike with her new position than Dr. McGaughey is in line to get.