The NY Times Catches Up With My Groundbreaking Trend of Staying in Cheap LA Hotels

Hey, this guy sounds a lot like me:

There was a time, on my frequent trips to the West Coast, when I used to stay at chic West Hollywood hotels, in rooms furnished with designer bottled waters, vinyl beanbag chairs and all manner of pay-per-view television entertainments. Each morning I proudly strode past fitness rooms, spas and barbershops I never visited, and each night I went to bed contentedly knowing that the hotel bar was packed with the sorts of people who would never give me the time of day.

Now, though, with the slumping economy, such sumptuous amenities are as much a relic of the past as the Brown Derby restaurant. Now when I travel to the West Coast, my center of gravity is shifted miles to the east, away from Sunset Boulevard to a far less alluring side of Los Angeles. I can usually be found at one of several low-cost motels in the city’s Koreatown and Thai Town neighborhoods, where the 101 meets Western Avenue and where glamorous expectation meets economic reality.

I know, reporting on the Travelodge as some sort of post-ironic hipster discovery is kind of ridiculous, but I've had the same experience. Bootie LA brings me down maybe once every couple months, and my hipster lodging of choice was the Standard Downtown. Rates there used to be as low as $119 a night, booked online with enough advance warning, and I felt like a rock star, with the Holzer in the lobby and Jose Gonzalez on the stereo on the roof deck. The minimalist rooms were just my style, and upon returning from the DJ gig, half-drunk, at 3:30am, room service was always available with a very tasty burger and fries. Granted, I was usually spending about as much on the whole deal as I was making at the gigs, but whatever, it was a vacation, right?

But things change. First, no longer having the disposable income of my good old LIVE 105 job means budget concerns are paramount; second, rates at the hotel seem to rarely go below $200/night these days; and third, I've stayed a couple non-hipster places and they're really not so bad. My discount hotel of choice is currently the Comfort Inn Sunset, and at about $90/night, it's not like it's free, but I'm saving money on a whole bunch of other things: parking, for one, which is free, and secured, under the hotel, and late-night room service, whose absence forces me to grab a tasty burrito at one of the late-night joints down the street rather than spend $25 on a burger. The rooms are recently renovated, and while the lights all use the worst, flickery fluorescent bulbs, it's pleasant enough, and the times I've stayed there my room faced the building next door, so no street noise from Sunset.

While I've done some work at the desk like the NY Times guy (and utilized the free wifi), part of the appeal for me is that the no-frills room really urges one to get out on the town. The hotel's location a quick drive from Silverlake means tons of cool restaurants and shops are right nearby, and of course Bootie LA at the Echo is just a few blocks the other direction. Since there's no waiting for a dipshit model-turned-valet to get your rental car, heading out is pretty easy.

I'll be interested to see if the Hollywood-area resurgence (a new W hotel is going in right at Hollywood and Vine) will trickle down to the more budget-minded hipster, and we'll see hotels spring up that are no-frills but, you know, cool. I've always lamented that the fantastic Ace Hotel in Seattle (and now Portland) doesn't have a location in every city: while some people might be put off by the hostel-like "bathrooms down the hall" concept, those bathrooms are spotless, like minimalist white labs, and there's a whole row of them -- I never had to wait, ever, and never felt weird about it. These rooms are still just $99/night. But hey, their website says they're opening new Aces in New York and Palm Springs; I'll be interested to see if they keep the low-price but high-style concept. In the meantime, hello, Comfort Inn across from the donuts-and-Thai-food place!

One More Reason Obama is the Right Choice for Democrats: Nebraska Goes Purple

I was leaning towards Obama all through last year, but skeptical of the "cult of personality" that seemed to be accumulating around him; Hillary's work in the senate had really impressed me, despite the fact that the Clinton circus drives me up the wall. So, I waited until Iowa, and then I watched his victory speech.



I kind of got a little choked up, and what I realized is that inspiration, in and of itself, isn't something to be cynically tossed aside, like I'd been doing; and that in fact, it's not Obama's otherworldly brilliance that impressed me, but his normalcy. It's almost as if politics squeezes the normalcy out of a person, almost inevitably, but in Obama we have a chance for a politician who's still kind of a regular human being.

Of course, Hillary's actions post-Iowa only cemented my feelings: Bill's disgusting outbursts blew my mind, and her campaign's dismissiveness of all of Obama's wins was bafflingly idiotic. Putting aside my deep reservations about electing a former first lady (are we freaking Argentina?) and the establishment of American political dynasties, that dismissiveness of red (or small) states struck me as reason enough to vote for Obama instead: not only is ignoring, say, Wisconsin a terrible strategy for winning the White House, it also serves to hold down the Democratic slate in other races. It's something Kos calls the "50-state strategy," and it's absolutely essential to overturning the Rove-created juggernaut of solid red states and entrenched 49/49 national splits in national elections, and in breaking through in state and local elections in traditional Republican strongholds. Now, we have some proof of how this might look in the general election against McCain in the fall.

Survey USA has compiled polls from individual states pitting both Clinton and Obama against McCain, and the results are fascinating.

First up, the hypothetical Clinton-McCain matchup:



Clinton ekes out a victory, grabbing both Florida and Ohio, which seems kind of far-fetched to me, but whatever. Now, here's Obama's map:



It's not only a more decisive win, but a more interesting and safer one: he brings it in without either Florida or Pennsylvania. And what, pray tell, is all that stripey business going on in my home state of Nebraska?!

If you're not familiar with the Cornhusker State's strange governmental practices, not only do we have a kooky unicameral legislature, since 1996 we also split presidential electoral votes by congressional district. It's never been tested in the three elections since then, because all three districts (1-Lincoln & Eastern counties, 2-Omaha, and 3-the Western 2/3 of the state) have always been reliably Bushy (or, uh, Dole-y).

But not only does the SurveyUSA Nebraska poll puts a potential Obama/McCain matchup at only 42-45% statewide, rendering the whole state a "tossup" (!!), it actually shows Obama beating McCain in both CD1 and 2: 44-42 in Lincoln, 45-43 in Omaha, compared to Clinton's 31-59 and 30-54 losses in both districts. This would give Obama 2 of NE's 5 electoral votes. Not only is it mind-blowing, considering Nebraska had the 2nd highest margin for Bush in 2004 outside of Wyoming (that's right, more than Texas), but also, strategically, it's rulebook-shattering: it's easy to imagine another close election where one or two electoral votes might make the difference, and if a couple of those might come from Nebraska, all bets are off.

Who knows what could happen between now and the election in November; these points could be completely moot. But I do know that Hillary Clinton offers zero hope whatsoever to rewrite the rulebook about how national elections work in the US, and would serve only to reinforce the same old red state/blue state dichotomy that the Rove strategy has proven to win, every time.

And sure, McCain seems like a good guy, but a) if he appoints another Scalia like he says he will, fuck him, and b) you know for a fact he'll govern more conservatively than he, uh, senatored, considering everybody's watching out for him to be "too liberal," so he'll overreact to the right. Plus he'll pick a far-right dipshit to be his VP and then probably die in office, giving us President Ridge or (shudder) Huckabee. You can respect his war service (and sense of humor) without wanting any of that crap.

New Music: 3face

Okay, we get it, two-face, three-face. Of course don't forget No Face:



He was super scary but then nice. But really, if you think about it, we've all got way more than three faces, even. Sometimes I'm Mopey Ben, other times I'm Drunk Ben, often I'm Curious Ben, a lot of the time I'm Worried Ben. The one thing I'm not really ever is Party Ben; thus the irony. But I think I could come up with at least seven primary faces, so from now on please refer to me as "7face."

Anyway, I heard this on a Sinden show from Kiss FM I downloaded. This guy may have four less faces than me, but he made a nice song. Actually he made an okay song and then it got a spectacular remix. The Four Tops sample is pretty inspired:



...but mostly I just like those ringing, propulsive chords, like I wrote about over on The Rifferoonie; it's a proper counterpoint to the oddly chirpy sample chorus, intense and urgent, futuristic.

3face, Nasty Jack, Nolay, Scorcher, Tinchy Stryder & Wretch 32 - "Different World" (All Star Remix)

3face MySpace (har)

3face interview

Mexico: Pictures

Hey look, I'm in Mexico, and here's some pretty pictures.

Shiny balloons apparently drive the Mexican economy:


Cool old falling-down building with wacky graffitos:


Cinco tacos al pastor, plus giganto glass of jamaica drink: 39 pesos (like $3.50)


Must be tacos with an angel, must be tacos with an angel:

Minimetro!

It's the cutest metro around! You've got to go to Perugia, Italy, to ride it. One hopes the little cars make that Jetsons noise.

Bi-bi-bi-bi-bi-bi-bi!

Speak Italian? Read all about it here.

And here's a video.

I'm Right About the Zoo

An article in today's Chronicle kicks off with this sentence:

The San Francisco Zoo is a sad and outdated place, with exhibits reminiscent of what might be found in the Third World or Eastern Europe.

Wow, has somebody been reading The Party Blog? What's different is that their article doesn't just have random impressions fostered by a longstanding hatred of eucalyptus trees (ahem); instead, they have actual experts from around the world checking into what's up over at the zoo, and the picture they paint is pretty horrific:

"There is a lack of animal-mindedness at the zoo," said Peter Stroud, former senior curator at the Melbourne Zoo and former director of the Werribee Open Range Zoo, both in Australia. Stroud, who has 27 years of experience in the zoo industry, said he spent four or five hours at the San Francisco Zoo on Thursday and concluded that it would never be accredited by the latest standards being applied in his country. ...

He said that the concrete chimpanzee grotto was "Third World," that the three polar bears exhibited the "stereotypical behavior" of bored and captive creatures, and that the relatively new African Savanna exhibit, which opened in 2004, did not provide enough shelter for the animals and prompted some to engage in aberrant behavior. The giraffes, for example, excessively lick and chew at their barn.

The zombie SF zookeepers toed the official line while, I assume, whipping baby seals:

"They could not be more wrong," said San Francisco Zoo spokeswoman Lora LaMarca. "Our animal keepers are so dedicated to the care and keeping of the animals. I cannot give what they say a whole lot of credibility."

Right, the senior curator at the Melbourne zoo has zero credibility. Good zombies! Now get back to whipping those marmosets!!

Japanese Hotel I Totally Have to Go To

It's well known that I like hot water, getting in the hot water, and also eating tasty snacks, perhaps of Japanese variety. Well check out the Fujiya Ginzan profiled over at Coolhunter, it's like the coolest place in the world. Here's their website, and from it I see their cheapest room, which appears to not have its own bathroom (?) is $325/night. Actually not so bad considering food is included and if my own experience at a ryokan is any indication (on a super fun trip with a then-boyfriend, back in the heady, cheap-travel days just post-9/11) that food will be mind-blowingly awesome.

Sigh. I suppose I could go have a bath and then make a microwave burrito, it'll kind of be the same...?

SF Muni So Terrible That Making It Free Would Destroy It

This from today's SF Gate: a study commissioned by the mayor's office to see how making the San Francisco Muni system free might work has concluded that since the whole system is teetering on the verge of collapse as it is, making it free would probably cause every bus to explode in unison. One might have thought, in the traffic-strangled Bay Area, that increasing Muni ridership might be a priority. Nope. Feel the power:

If [a 50% ridership increase] happened to Muni, which now provides nearly 700,000 trips on an average day, the annual operating and maintenance costs would rise by nearly $69 million. ...In addition, the city would have to add an estimated 267 buses and streetcars to its fleet of about 1,000 at a cost of approximately $537 million. New storage and maintenance yards also would be needed to accommodate the new vehicles. Muni also would have to figure out how to run more streetcars through the tunnels. The consultants warned of bottlenecks and added delays. The system already has problems running on schedule. Muni currently needs an estimated $100 million to $150 million more a year to make the significant service improvements voters demanded in 1999 but have yet to see. Even if the money were available, it would take five to 10 years to purchase the new equipment and expand the maintenance capacity.

Also, the fare boxes house evil miniature demons, with whom Muni reached a delicate detente in the mid-80s; any disruption of the demons could cause multi-dimensional time vortexes and/or mysterious plagues.

Ahem. So tell us, City Controller, don't we want to attract new riders?

City Controller Ed Harrington, a veteran City Hall fiscal watchdog who also chairs a special mayor's panel looking at ways to stabilize Muni's finances, said the notion of free Muni should be shelved because it likely would attract hundreds of thousands of new riders and prove detrimental.

He then unveiled Muni's new "Discouraging Ridership in the New Millenium" program, which will feature off-putting advertisements in bus shelters, increasing the pumped-in urine smells in subway stations, and a new slogan, "Muni: We'll Pay You to Take a Cab Instead."

Argh. Where's the Bay Area on that "worst traffic" list, are we still #2? Jeez, even LA is making huge strides in public transit: can anyone explain to me why San Francisco can't get its act together?

Somebody Tried to Steal My Pizza

What in the sam hill is going on around here? Last night, after my little motorcycle mishap, my leg was hurting, and I was feeling a little self-piteous, so I thought I'd order pizza for dinner. First let me just say that when you put in your order with Extreme Pizza and then they say "that'll be an hour to an hour and 15 minutes, thanks bye," it's a bit of a shock. You're right up the street, dudes -- are you curing the sausage or something?! But at least they were honest, and in fact, exactly one hour and 16 minutes later, my phone rang and it was the delivery guy downstairs. When I got there and opened the door, I see him coming across the street, and some guy has just run up to him and is about to grab my pizza. The delivery guy is pretty old and is more surprised than anything, and when the would-be thief sees me, he seems to reconsider and runs off. This all took about 1 second, too fast for me to react, I'm standing there a bit dumbfounded. Mr. Almost Pizza Robber has run down and jumped in a car at the corner, and we make a half-hearted effort to run and see if we can get his license number, but don't make it in time and the guy takes off. The delivery guy says "Jeez, I've been doing this six years, and that's never happened." I was like, wow, do you think this is another sign of an impending recession?

Anyway the pizza (sausage and mushroom) was fine, and the side spinach salad was excellent, it was like $22 and I gave the guy an $8 tip, since it was all a little freaky.

I Hate You, City CarShare Drivers

I've been a bit baffled by the stupidity of these supposedly new-fangled "car share" businesses that have sprung up in San Francisco. City CarShare allows you, for instance, to have access to cars for a $10/month fee, then pay $5/hour and $0.40/mile for use of a car. That means, according their website, a day trip to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium would run you $71.20. That's not including the $30 non-refundable application fee (and a $20 late fee!), although it does include gas. Compare it to, what did they used to call this business? Oh yeah: renting a fucking car. I had some errands to do this weekend and a DJ gig that I had to bring CD players to, so I booked a 3-day car rental at Hertz two blocks away. Using the United promotional rate which I think anybody can access on United's website, it cost me $61, for 72 full hours. Filling up the tank cost me another $12. Granted, I had to park it at night, but still, the "CarShare" is about the same cost for 1/3 the car. Dumb?

But tonight something happened to me that made me consider another CarShare negative I've never thought of: putting a bunch of scaredy-cat inexperienced drivers behind the wheel. A purple City CarShare Scion slammed on their brakes and whipped around for no reason right in front of me tonight when I was on the motorcycle, and I had to brake a little hard, and slipped on wet oily pavement and went down. It was probably better than hitting them -- like you really think consciously in a split second, although I wasn't even going that fast, they just stopped and turned around in the middle of the street like idiots. It was pretty clear I was fine since once I pulled my foot out from under the bike I was able to get up and pull the bike back up, but the CarShare kids had taken off by then without so much as a "how-do-you-do." Thanks for checking to make sure I was alright, assholes.

Of course, I'm fine, other than a sore hand, a bruised hip and some asphalt embedded in a bloody knee. Plus a good pair of jeans, all ripped! The motorcycle's a little bunged up needs new turn signals on its right side, but all in all it could be worse.

The City CarShare site brags that "95% of applicants are approved" like that's something to be proud of. One wonders if bringing that acceptance rate down to 90% would have eliminated tonight's dipshits?

Brr

Ugh. I had a few days with no major projects or DJ gigs so I thought about taking a quick vacation, but in the interest of saving money (and what will probably be a bit of a rough tax bill coming up soon) I decided against it, and instead I thought I'd just have a "home based" vacation -- not stress about work or anything all weekend and take it east. San Francisco cooperated with freezing temperatures and miserable, spitty rain, and it doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon. Sure, the rest of the country has it worse with their -20 wind chills, but still, ugh! So, even though Coachella's lineup is a bit underwhelming, I can't wait to go down to the desert. Three months to the day...

The San Francisco Zoo: Run by Satan's Zookeepers?

As usual, I headed to Nebraska for the holidays, and when I got to my parents' house, one of the first things they asked me was if I'd heard about the tiger that killed somebody in San Francisco. Er, what? Well, all I had to do to find out about it was turn on the TV, since the story dominated newscasts all through the holiday, until the assassination of Benazir Bhutto knocked it off the screens. While the thought of being attacked and killed by an escaped tiger at your local zoo is horrifying enough, the way the zoo handled things makes me wonder if the place is being run by a satan-worshipping cabal of sadistic freaks, secretly presided over by Dick Cheney, who's writing all their public statements.

First of all, check this out: zoo employees initially told police that the reports of an escaped tiger that had come in to the 911 center were the "ravings of a mentally unstable person" according to the Chronicle. When fire crews and police arrived, the zoo was on "emergency lockdown" and employees prevented them from going inside. Now, wouldn't you think that police and fire crews would be exempt from an emergency lockdown, and that in fact, you might actually want them to get involved with the emergency? Zoo officials apparently panicked during the crisis, telling police that up to four tigers had escaped, until somebody thought to count the ones still in the cages.

In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, of course, everyone is demanding to know how a tiger could have escaped, and zoo officials are insisting the tiger's enclosure is surrounded by a 20-foot-wide moat and 20-foot-high walls; accusations that the victims "taunted" the tiger or that foul play was involved started to hit the press. Word leaked of a shoe and/or blood found inside the tiger's enclosure, like that was proof the victims were somehow responsible. Then came this quote from zoo director Manuel Mollinedo that absolutely blew my mind:

"Somebody created a situation that really agitated her and gave her some sort of a method to break out," Mollinedo said. "There is no possible way the cat could have made it out of there in a single leap. I would surmise that there was help. "A couple of feet dangling over the edge could possibly have done it." Sources said pinecones and sticks that were found in the moat might have been thrown at the animal. Those items could not have landed in the grotto naturally, they said.

Let me get this straight: you're saying the victims lifted themselves up over the wall, dangled their feet towards the tiger, who then was able to jump up and grab those legs, since the wall had been perfectly calibrated as being only a foot or two beyond the reach of the animal's leap; then, using superhuman strength, the victims were able to pull the leg-dangling taunter and the attached tiger back over the wall, so the tiger could run free? Is this guy for real? And yeah, sticks and pinecones, there is no way those could ever be found in a zoo exhibit. Besides, don't you know tigers use those sticks to build exit ramps from their cages?

Well, if it did build a ramp, it didn't have far to go: now we have reports that the tiger enclosure's wall was only a little over 12 feet high, which is below national standards. Whoops. Police chief Heather Fong says that no shoe or blood was found inside the enclosure. Oh, sorry. An employee of a photo booth at the zoo said he couldn't believe anyone would taunt the tigers, saying "It's pitch black around here by 5 p.m... I would have been scared to be anywhere near that cage the way they're describing it."

Anyone who knows San Francisco knows that the area of town by the zoo is kind of a "land of the lost." It's perennially fog-bound and cold, and salty air from the nearby ocean seems to have sucked the color and life out of the surrounding buildings. It's where the last, supremely creepy Doggie Diner was, and the ever-present eucalyptus trees give the air a sickly sweet, moldy smell. Smack dab in the middle of this area is the zoo, and I've never been there: it gives off a vibe of being the black hole of misery in the center of this galaxy that time forgot. The dysfunction--and, really, sheer evil--of zoo officials in this situation seems to confirm all these images, like the employees are calcified zombies, barely aware of how to deal with the outside world. Zoos in general are kind of fucked up, and putting a bunch of tropical animals in the middle of this freezing, miserable, gray area seems completely insane, an idea straight out of the 1800s, when animals were treated like objects for our amusement.

Ultimately, whether or not there was any "taunting" of an animal at the zoo is completely beside the point: animals shouldn't be able to escape. Teenage rowdiness does not condemn you to a horrible death at the hands of a tiger. Zoo officials' response and statements implying otherwise are shameful.

I'll say it: shut down the San Francisco Zoo.

Video from the Gettin' Euros Tour: Liege, Belgium

DJ Klax, a lovely young lady I met in Liege (who was kind enough to interview me after interviewing DJ Zebra for a local radio station, even though my French was terrible and it was pretty clear Zebra was the star) has posted some cool videos of Zebra's and my sets at Soundstation, and while I have to say it's kind of boring to watch me since I'm just, you know, playing CDs, you can kind of get an idea of stuff I was playing, and hey, look at that, some people in the crowd seem to like it (remember it was 3am when i was on). Most awesomely, she made a crazy intro screen using my "Gettin' Euros" logo and a giant euro sign, which by the way Nako is threatening to have T-shirts made of.

Party Ben at Soundstation Liège (Belgium) 03


Do people get the semi-ironic way in which I'm playing "Pump It Up"? Actually I've lost track of whether anything I do is ironic or not any more...

Also, if you watch Video #1, you can hear a point where my goofy mix of "Jump Around" with Queen and GHP's Queen/AC/DC mix suddenly ramps up about 5% in speed, and as you can see I'm not touching the right CD player, it just did it by itself, I swear. This is the kind of hardship I was dealing with all over Europe people! But thankfully there was a 3rd CDJ so I just abandoned that one.

More Pics from the Gettin' Euros Tour: Poland

DJ Spox sends over some lovely b/w shots of the gig in Warsaw, although a couple of them look kind of weird since the red light makes everything red look white, like say, the red & white Polska scarves. Go here to see them all, and here's a couple good ones:

Party Ben and a couple fans post-set:


Duze Pe, Spox and myself, celebrating Poland's qualification for the Euro 2008 championships with scarves:


Dancing peeps:

United Airlines Operating New Time Machine 747s

As a frequent (and frequently frustrated) flyer on United Airlines, I'm a subscriber to their "E-fares" e-mails, which let you know about last-minute cheap fares. Usually it's pretty slim pickings, with $200 flights to Boise or Wichita, but tonight I got the e-mail and clicked over to see where they were offering inexpensive tickets, and got a bit of a surprise: some e-fares allow you to travel back in time three or four days.



That's right: "Depart anytime Saturday December 22nd, return anytime Monday December 17th or Tuesday, December 18th." Also, E-fares entitle you to change your velocity without a force acting upon you, take actions without equal and opposite reactions, and know both the position and velocity of quantum-scale particles. Buy now!