Good morning, it’s Tuesday, July 21, and — surprise! — you can expect a continuation of this week’s hot, hot weather.
On Larchmont Boulevard, anything goes.
If you’ve spent any time in Larchmont Village, you’ve almost certainly seen this confounding sight: On any day, at almost any given time, the center median of Larchmont Boulevard is packed with cars parked in flagrant violation of the California Vehicle Code.
Workaday Priuses and Teslas alike are abandoned in the middle of the road as if it were a parking lot. The practice has become a perennial source of frustration for business owners and residents, who bemoan the safety hazards and traffic headaches they say median parkers pose — so much so that one reader asked us to look into the phenomenon for our L.A. Mystery series, where we publish micro investigations of local enigmas.
So I spent several sweaty afternoons dodging in and out of storefronts along the posh boulevard this week, speaking to business owners and patrons, trying to understand how this strange custom developed and why the city hasn’t stopped it.
“It’s the height of hubris to say ‘I’m going to park here and it won’t be a problem for anybody else,’” Steve Kazanjian, a longtime Larchmont resident, told me. “It’s blatantly rude. I think it’s awful.”
Alex Kaiser, who served me a roasted turkey sandwich at Larchmont’s beloved wine and cheese shop, put it more succinctly: “It’s Carmageddon.”
Residents and business owners have raised frustrations about municipal bureaucracy and a perceived lack of enforcement. And the problem gets at a question that almost all of us living in a big city at some point wonder: Which laws are enforced, which are ignored, and why?
But a quick look at Larchmont’s parking ticket data — and a few revealing conversations with local drivers — shows there’s more to the story.
READING MATERIAL
TOWER TURNAROUND: The downtown “graffiti towers” are slated for a makeover as a bankruptcy judge is expected to clear the sale of the high rises, the California Post reported.
SYSTEM BIAS: Kaiser’s private arbitration system, which governs how patients file medical malpractice complaints, has come under new scrutiny from patients and attorneys who say the process is stacked in the health giant’s favor. The L.A. Times chronicled the mounting concerns about the system.
SCROLLYLAND: Visitors to Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth, are increasingly spending their time buried in their phones trying to game the ride reservation system. “To have the best experience now, at least one person in every party needs to be the theme-park equivalent of a designated driver,” the Wall Street Journal wrote.
ROBO REVEREND: Pastors across the country are using AI to write their sermons. One featured by the Wall Street Journal is Vallejo’s Rev. Justin Lester, who preaches alongside a robot dog and built a tool called PastorGPT.
CIGGIE INDEX: A software engineer built a quirky website that purports to show cities’ air quality in terms of cigarettes. This week in L.A., apparently, 24 hours outside is equivalent to half a smoke.
RAW MATERIAL
In today’s archival footage flashback … a look back at the tornado that swept through downtown Los Angeles in March 1983.
AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: "Any Common Desolation” by Ellen Bass.
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