Kroozin' the Boulevard--A Criminal Offense

Two stories appeared one after the other on KTTV Fox News At Ten this evening; laughable in the stupidity so ably illuminated.

The first story has been an ongoing lie on the part of local government: apparently our New York/Boston import Chief of Police, William Bratton still believes that gang murders and other gang activity isn't racially motivated. In the same story, LA County's Sheriff Lou Baca, who rarely utters any other comment that that his department needs a larger budget, disagrees He says that some part of gang criminal activity is racially motivated. Duh!

The underlying message of the Police of El Pueblo de Los Angeles is that they really don't want to seriously attack gang activity. El alcalde, Antonio Vinaigrette, after all, was once a gangster himself before he found it more fun to be a philanderer.

Instead, the city police, the county deputy sheriffs and the California Highway Patrol (all ordered to extract the maximum possible legal tender from every possible motorist, to help mitigate the deficit) have decided it would be far easier and more fun to make driving, as Chuck Berry says, "With No Particular Place To Go," illegal on Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards.

Over the years youths, including myself years ago (hell, who am I kidding--I still do it once in a while!), enjoyed kroozin' the various major boulevards in LA just to see and be seen, check out the chicks (who are checking out the guys), and to stop by Tubby's for a burger and fries. For an idea of what I mean, watch the movie "American Graffiti."

Van Nuys Blvd, Whittier Blvd, Bristol Blvd and many others have been favorite Kroozin' streets over the years, and all have been rendered illegal Kroozin' streets by cops with nothing better to do (while real criminals run rampant, virtually unchecked).

Now, it's the natural kroozin' circuit--up on Hollywood, back on Sunset. The bastards.

I'm wondering if there's an attorney who will sue the agencies for gas taxes and license fees for our having been deprived of the right to the pursuit of happiness.

Cops say it's because the Kroozers make a lot of noise and disturb neighborhoods. I'm pausing to clean up the Diet Coke I splattered all over my screen, laughing when I heard that! If you've ever been in the Hollywood/West Hollywood portions of those streets, there ain't no quiet. Ever. Well, maybe between three and five in the morning you'll hear not much but the drunks, snoring on the sidewalks.

There's no fine for that.

But there is a minimum $275 fine for Kroozin'. And, they've doubled it for the duration of the state, county and city deficits.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Open Letter to California Congressman Howard L. Berman, (D-Calif)

I don't suppose anyone will actually show this letter to the Congressman, the Baron of the lands that include what I chortlingly (post KELO) call my house, home and castle, in view of his Democrat (ie, leftist) mindset, so I'll circulate it in other places as well.

Everyone who's read entries to this site over the months and years knows that I love cars and I love to drive. In fact, I took a twenty-odd mile drive around the Central Valley this afternoon--kroozin' along Ventura, Van Nuys and Sepulveda Boulevards, looking at the other cars, the buildings, the businesses, the girls and the other scenery.

Losing the ability to do this will seriously piss me off.

Hence, the first of (perhaps) a number of these missives:

Dear Congressman Berman:

Today, most gas stations are selling regular gasoline for around $4.50 a gallon. Diesel, for reasons I can't fathom, is even more. News stories are beginning to come out that gasoline and diesel are being stolen from cars, trucks, farms and construction sites. Yet, the federal government refuses, in the light of all this, to see reason, to get out of the way and allow oil companies to drill in US territory.

There will be alternative energy someday. It'll happen faster if government stays out of it and allows entrepreneurs and investors to allocate funds intelligently. But, it'll take some time.

In the meantime, the United States government holds billions and billions of barrels of oil off the market....for what? So that Americans will have to return to a hunter-gatherer society?

What's next? Americans shooting those they see siphoning gas from their cars? People unwilling to go to work because gas is too expensive to make their drive to expensive to be worth the effort? General strikes?

I ask you to reconsider your opposition to a prosperous America and lead an effort to free oil producers to drill and refine oil for the use of Americans. Voters like myself are watching America deteriorate, and we don't like it.

Thanks for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

[Col. Hogan]
Sherman Oaks

We'll see whether he represents those of us who commute in cars, or whether he represents himself only.

People shouldn't be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Every Auto Dealership Should Have One Good Mechanic

I've worked in gas stations a few times in my youth, back in the days when many gas stations had service bays and did some light mechanical work. I managed one of these gas stations for a couple of years. In addition to pumping gas, we also did light mechanical work, such as oil changes, belts and hoses, selling and repairing tires and replacing bulbs, wipers, etc.

Over the years, I've had occasion to buy two or three new cars (mostly, I buy older cars, because they're simpler, and I can do a lot of the necessary work myself, which I like to do), and thus have had a few opportunities to use the dealer's shop for warranty work.

I now own a 1957 Chevy. A couple of weeks ago, a leak developed in the lower radiator hose. I also had an ailing starter, which I'd been putting off fixing because of a lack of time to do so. The leaking hose had to be fixed right away, and I still didn't have time to do it.

I took the car over to Rydell Chevrolet, in Van Nuys. They loved the car; several of the service advisers told me tales of similar cars they or their parents owned many years ago. The next day, I got a call from the service adviser. A "technician" replaced the starter, but the "technician" who was to replace the radiator hose couldn't do it because the car has a non-stock engine and a custom-made radiator.

I told the adviser that all the "technician" has to do is take the old hose off and compare it by eyeball to the new hoses they have in stock. One of them will fit. Well, it seems that "service technicians" don't work that way. They requisition parts by means of their computer. The computer only shows the stock hose for the car.

Back at home, and backed against the wall, I took the old hose off myself. It took maybe twenty minutes (there are access issues). I took the hose to my neighborhood Kragen and explained the situation. The clerk immediately took me to the aisle in which dozens of radiator hoses were hanging from pegs. In less than five minutes of looking, I found a hose that would work.

Back home, I had to cut the hose to length and, because of the access difficulties, it took me about half an hour to install the hose and refill the radiator with coolant. Ready to go, and for a mere thirteen dollars. I'm sure that a good mechanic, with a far better set of tools than I, could've done the whole thing, including the starter, in less than an hour.

So, I guess I really did have time to do the work.

The current assembly line-style auto service technician schools might turn out good technicians, but it takes an ability to think on one's feet to make a good mechanic. Every auto shop should have one good mechanic.

Darwin got it backwards.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Of Roads and Highways

Construction is my life. I work in the quality assurance/quality control area. My current job is to test and evaluate soils and materials used in soil grading operations, foundation engineering and road and parking lot construction. At various times in the past, I've done field inspection and testing of these soils, as well as asphalt pavements and concrete structures in highway construction and flood control projects.

I've worked for CalTrans, the Orange County (Calif) Road Department, The US Army Corps of Engineers, and five different private construction quality control firms. I also worked for a couple of private land surveyors in my youth--when we used manual levels, transits and chains.

My background includes parts of Interstate 5 in the mountains north of Los Angeles, Interstate 405 in the Irvine Ranch area, a major subdivision survey in Riverside County that resulted in the bedroom community of Moreno Valley, a survey of the Orange County Line from the ocean at Seal Beach, through the mountains and finishing at the ocean just south of San Clemente. My work aided in the construction of numerous housing subdivisions, business parks and condo/apartment projects in San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles Counties. I did quality assurance and field inspection on two large flood control projects, one in Riverside County and the other in San Bernardino. I did the same thing on the Santa Ana River rebuild in Orange County and the Seven Oaks Dam, in the San Bernardino Mountains.

This might seem like a sort of resume, except that I'm a lot closer to retirement than I am to seeking another job. Unless someone makes me an offer I can't refuse, I'll probably retire from my current position.

I've contemplated retirement a lot lately, and have very mixed thoughts. On the one hand, I can do some other things for which I haven't really had enough time while working full time. On the other, how can I quit work that I very much enjoy doing?

I suppose there's a connection: I also love to drive. I can spend hours cruising the streets of the Valley, Los Angeles, and Orange County. I also like driving the freeways, though I do get impatient if traffic is too slow, too long. It takes me forty minutes to get to or from work normally, but it has taken me as much as three hours on a couple of occasions. I hate it when that happens.

Last fall, Debbie and I went to Las Vegas for the Liberty Magazine Editor's Conference. Eschewing the airlines (I won't allow low-level federal parasites inspecting my nether areas), and AmTrak (most of whose trip is actually on a bloody bus, even though there's a perfectly good rail track right to Las Vegas from Los Angeles. Aside: one can only marvel at the short-sightedness of AmTrak, not to have rail service between LA and Las Vegas.

I drove. I thoroughly enjoyed it. We left LA at midnight. There is absolutely nothing like driving through the Southern California desert in the wee hours on a cool autumn night. Almost no one on the highway but eighteen-wheelers. The drive was almost as much fun for me, as the time we spent in Las Vegas!

I also enjoy driving 'pon roads that I helped build. I did quality control testing on many of the arterial boulevards criss-crossing the hills of southern Orange County. There was very little there, back in the early 1970's when we built these roads. Orange groves. Thirty-odd years later, they are still in very good shape.

Why am I blathering on about my own checkered past? Well, because I want to, and it's my blog. I hope it'll prove interesting to some few of you. I'll soon return to being my nasty, hypercritical, cynical self.

Patience.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Kroozin'

Now that I no longer live in the OC, I find that I have a whole new kroozin' ground. Twice this week, I found time to travel the streets and boulevards of the San Fernando Valley. As I already knew, from time spent here in the past, SFV is a very interesting area, unlike any other.

This past Monday, I took a drive in the Burbank area. I lived in Sun Valley (a small district of El Pueblo de Los Angeles) back in 1966-1967. 'Twas just north of what was then called Lockheed Airport--now Bob Hope Airport. Part of my drive ranged through the Sun Valley area, though most of it went back and forth in Burbank proper.

Burbank, home of Disney Studios and Warner Bros, not to mention the Pickwick Center, which includes the Pickwick Equestrian Center (now the LA Equestrian Center), the Pickwick Bowl, the Pickwick Ice Center and Pickwick Gardens. While driving around in Burbank, one finds dozens of independent small businesses of every kind lining the streets, and hundreds of well-maintained dwellings everywhere. If there's a slum in Burbank, I haven't found it.

Burbank calls itself the "Media Capital of the World."

Today, I drove around the western part of SFV. I went through Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys, North Hills, Northridge (center of the 1994 Earthquake), Winnetka, Reseda, Tarzana, Encino, then back to Sherman Oaks.

It was quite a drive. The weather was perfect: cool, sunny, a little windy with the streets full of Christmas shoppers in their BMWs and SUVs. This part of the Valley looks a little more like the OC, with more shopping centers with Mervyns, Targets and Ralphs. This part of the Valley has wider boulevards than the eastern part, and boasts more mature trees than does the OC. It also has a far wider variety of small businesses and ethnic eateries.

Another neat thing: Most of SFV is laid out on a rectangular grid. Most of the boulevards either run north-south or east-west and run arrow-straight for miles and miles. If I get lost and find, for example, Victory Boulevard, I can drive along it for ten miles or more until I find Woodman. Then it's a right turn for a couple of miles and I'm a few short blocks from home. You just can't get lost.

Most of the Valley is in El Pueblo de Los Angeles, unfortunately. There was an attempt by SFV to secede and form a separate city a few years ago, but they allowed the entire city to vote on it. Since a huge portion of the most productive Angelenos live in the Valley, and a large portion of the non-productive live in other parts of the city--all of whom got to vote on the proposition--the attempt failed.

The LA city's parasites couldn't keep up the degree of corruption without all that SFV tax money coming in.

Well, that's apparently the cost of living in SFV.

Large parts of SFV remain unexplored, and I plan to take more of these drives as often as I can. After all, I've only found two Mongolian BBQ joints in the Valley, and I'm still looking for the perfect pizza, a good indoor pistol range and a relaxing coffee shop.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Sharks on the Freeways

When you think about it, they're more like sharks than anything else. Any resemblance to the justice system or to the principles of protection of rights and property is....well, virtually nonexistent.

We like to think, and they'll tell you readily, that they exist to be a police presence on the streets and freeways and to help enhance your safety as you drive hither and yon. The least critical look shows that safety is not only not much enhanced by their presence, but often diminished.

I'll make the wild assumption that conditions are similar in other urban areas as they are to El Pueblo de Los Angeles, to the extent that:

• Most young to middle-aged drivers speed most of the time, if the streets and freeways are uncrowded enough to do so.
• Many of these same drivers are doing something else while driving, such as talking on the phone, eating, drinking, conversing with passengers or trying to control children.
• Many drivers make hasty lane changes to pass slower vehicles.
• Many drivers make last-second decisions to turn corners or exit the freeways from time to time.
• Many elderly drivers have mental and physical handicaps that make skillful driving difficult or impossible.
• Once in a while, a driver is applying makeup, brushing hair, hunting for something in the glovebox, on the seat or on the floor--and even reading(!).
  
• And, there are always the drunks.

The above list, as one might imagine, includes every driver, virtually if not in fact. Indeed, at any given moment on any given stretch of road, it includes a majority of the drivers thereon. Circulating among any thousand to a hundred-thousand drivers on the streets and highways, there might be one or two traffic cops.

Every once in a while, say three or four times in an eight-hour shift, the cop picks one of the worst violators in his view and pulls him over and writes him up. It becomes very random and relatively uncommon, leaving the driver to assume it won't happen often, regardless of how lawfully or unlawfully he drives. During those fifteen or twenty minutes--more if alcohol or drugs is suspected--hundreds or thousands of other traffic violators whiz past, unnoticed. Or, at least, unhindered.

Were I not such an amazingly good driver, I'd be scared to death!

Obviously, the way local and state government is reacting to the problem isn't working.

Let me hasten to add, before I attempt to suggest a solution, that I'm not opposed to speeding, per se. I used to drive pretty fast myself, and I've observed many very good drivers who move along well above the posted speed limit. I've calmed down quite a bit because, well, a man has to know his limitations. I'm not as young as I used to be.

That, and the fact that I'm of the opinion that many younger folks have not made the connections between actions and consequences, and I endeavor to not be near these people when their luck runs out. At least, not without an escape path.

Obviously, government cannot handle controlling traffic on the streets and freeways--nothing new. While I've been saying this for over thirty years, the problem continues to grow worse and more dangerous--even as cars are built to be safer. Government, in its haste to satisfy the whims of just about every politician and pressure group spends its resources on frivolous programs, while leaving infrastructure, such as streets and freeways, unmaintained and deteriorating.

The great experiment--that of allowing government to own and operate matters of individual transportation--must be declared an utter failure and ended. Roads, streets and freeways need to be sold to entrepreneurs who can find a way to operate and maintain them while (one hopes) making a profit.

I'll leave it to others to suggest the ways this might be done, although I have some ideas, which I'll, no doubt, expound 'pon at another time. Bob Poole, at Reason magazine, has studied this stuff extensively and has made many viable suggestions.

I spend entirely too much time driving the streets and freeways of the Stalag not to have an interest in this, since I love driving and plan to continue for a long time to come.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Ok, So Call Me Spoiled.

I recognize that seventy-five or more years ago, nobody ever heard of air conditioning, and that when it was hot, it was just hot.

We've gone beyond that now, and but for wacko environmentalists, will go a lot farther. One book I read, The Probability Broach, suggested air conditioned and heated cloaks to wear out in the street. That could be done in the very near future.

Meanwhile, if we work, play or wait for the bus outdoors, we live with the elements.

Such was the case yesterday. I was out on one of my long drives through urban Orange County. I do these partly because I love to just drive, and I like seeing various parts of the area in which I live. And partly because I now have a really cool car in which it's fun to cruise.

The temperature here yesterday ranged from 85 degrees at the beach to close to 100 in the Anaheim Hills. 'Twas also quite humid. I ran the car's a/c for a while, but I really like to drive with the windows down, so I soon turned it off.

I enjoyed a drive through Cypress, Westminster, Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley and Santa Ana (where I live), then thought I'd stop for a spot of lunch.

I like to stop at the one-off mom & pop eating places pretty often, but this time I opted for a pretty good chain Mexican place, Rubio's Fresh Mexican Grill, because their food is very good and very consistent. And, I like it.

What I have I spot of trouble with, is that for a Mexican restaurant, they tend to be kind of pc and even a mite green. Like Starbucks, they seem to follow leftist pop trends a little too much.

Apparently, they don't use air conditioning. I hadn't noticed it before, I guess because I'd never been there when it was hot.

After working for eight hours, then spending two more cruising in the heat, I was looking forward to stepping into an eating place to sit down and cool off. After I ordered, I sat and started reading my current book. After a bit, I realized that I was sweating and that it was bloody hot in there!

I considered for a moment, then decided that I didn't want to sit there sweating and eating, eating and sweating. I went to the cashier and asked for my money back.

She referred me to the shift manager, who seemed unable to understand my complaint. I finally said, "if you can't make it twenty degrees cooler in here right now, I want my money refunded."

I went a couple of doors down to a Subway and got a pretty good (better than I expected) Italian sandwich and it was cool!

We're hearing a lot about what a strain this heat wave is on the state's power grid, and I guess it is. Governor Davis the Grey was fired for having totally screwed up the state's power systems a few years ago. Our current Governator Schwarzeneggar has done absolutely nothing to even begin the construction of new power plants.

Let me hasten to add that it's an unfathomable travesty that state government is involved with the generation, distribution and sale of electrical energy at all, and that everyone doesn't have a choice of at least a half-dozen energy sellers from which to choose, but facts are facts, state government has a good deal of control over what Edison does, and they're stopping Edison from doing what needs to be done.

Instead, Davis the Grey initiated a program for we, the great unwashed, that he called Flex Your Power. Basically, the program tells Californians to turn everything off and slowly sweat in the dark.

Well, Davis, you butthead, and Schwarzeneggar, you George Bush neocon wannabe, I absolutely, positively refuse to "Flex my power." My thermostat stays where I want it: 74 degrees. If we have a brownout, it'll still be at 74 when the power comes back on again. Six bits says it's at 74 degrees at the governator's mansion right now.

Remember, VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!

Cool regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

While El Alcalde is Away, the Peones Will Play

There was a very large pro-immigration rally in many cities today. I, in one of my drives about areas of Southern California, found myself Cruisin' Bristol this afternoon. There were literally hundreds of Hispanics, mostly young folks, cruisin' in their cars up and down Bristol Avenue, Santa Ana, flying Mexican flags and generally making noise. It was a trip.

Santa Ana is home to more Hispanics than any other group, including, I think, we of the northern European persuasion. It's the county seat of Orange County is located pretty much in the center of the county.

Some time I'm going to have to ask why an expatriate Mexican, driven out of his country by the spectre of poverty, poor medical assistance an early death following an unfulfilling life, why he still reveres the country that, in effect, threw him out. If the United States ever finds a way to make me want to leave, I triple gawdamm guarantee I won't be flying the stars & stripes ever again.

Meanwhile, Senor Antonio Vinaigrette, El Alcalde del Pueblo de Los Angeles is out of town. Very convenient, being out of town when the events of the day are such that he doesn't want to dis the peones, nor does he want any photographic evidence of his support of them. Of course, the trip to Houston to meet with officials of the National Football League to see about a new football team for LA, was planned decades ago, and the timing has nothing to do with this day of protest, but his heart is with the Hispanic folk just trying to make a living in the good ol' USA.

There are future campaigns, after all!

I say, if they can find work, fine. We pay many people not to work by means of various forms of social welfare, and somebody has to do that stuff!

Conservatives claim that these folks ought to get citizenship the legal way, like "our ancestors did." What they forget is that the rules were very different fifty, a hundred, a hundred fifty years ago. The immigration system, however flawed, worked.

Today, INS is so lazy and smothered in its own bureaucracy that prospective immigrants grow old and die waiting for the process to work. Much easier to overstay one's visa and just get the best job you can.......

Remember, VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Driving around at $3.239 a Gallon

Last weekend, Debbie and I attended the 19th Annual Seal Beach Classic Car Show, putting the new (to me) '57 Bel Air on display for the first time. There were, according to the officials, about 450 cars entered. They were parked diagonally along Seal Beach's Main Street and three or four of the intersecting side streets, which were closed to allow pedestrians to walk freely among the cars and have access to the several shops and restaurants.

We had a great time, met a few fellow classic car folks and enjoyed a couple of bands, one of which was an old-timey instrumental surf band. We walked up and down the street several times, admiring the hotrods, stock classics, race cars and muscle cars.

We drove home by way of the scenic Pacific Coast Highway to round out a pleasant, sunny day.

Remember, VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENTS!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Yet Another in a Long List of Gas-Guzzlers

For the past couple of years, I've been driving Col. Hogan II, and occasionally, the Bomber. The Bomber always needed work and was costing me more money than was comfortable. Col. Hogan II has always needed cosmetic work, but always ran well and was both fun and comfortable.

Neither of them gets very good gas mileage.

About a month ago, I sold the Bomber. This week, Col. Hogan II goes up for sale. Why, you ask? Oh, you didn't ask. I'll tell you anyway.

I just bought a new guzzler. Since one of my favorite pastimes is driving--I even enjoy driving in heavy traffic, although I often mutter when I see someone reading while driving, or talking on a phone instead of driving, etc.

Debbie and I took the Amtrak up to Thousand Oaks Saturday morning and picked the car up, then drove it home. It was a thoroughly enjoyable drive. We also went for a drive up to LA yesterday--another very pleasurable outing.

I like this car pretty much the way it is, but there are a few things I plan to do to make it mine own--what car buff has no such plans?

Now, if they can just start drilling for all that cheap oil off the California coast......

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California