Deals

Remember the cliché about “the deal you can’t refuse?” The park-for-a-billboard caper in the city of Los Angeles is just such a deal. I’ll tell you about it. (Just as soon, that is, as you put that bottle back in the bag where it belongs. I have no desire to add another item to my institutional resume.)

Granted, the billboard story is hard to explain, because at bottom this deal makes so little sense. » read more | add to cart

When individuals barter, they generally have a firm sense of underlying value, i.e. “What’s this thing really worth to me?” A 10-year-old car might be worth $1,000, to judge from the Recycler or Craig’s List. At $20,000, a used car is a bargain only if it is a 1949 Ferrari Spider with the original piping on the seats.

Cities, on the other hand, often appear not to have a sense of “beyond this price we will not go.” True, they bargain for big things on which it is hard to pin values, such as stadiums for NFL football and professional soccer. Still, the fact that cities are willing to entertain highly aggressive offers suggests to me that some city officials have a hard time drawing a line between a good deal and a bad one.

» read more | add to cart

Why is Trump asking the city to get involved in his purchase of Running Horse?

» read more | add to cart

Why did nobody tell me that market-rate housing had become a NIMBY issue? Did I sleep this momentous event, just as I sawed a log through the Northridge earthquake? Here I am, bumbling through life as if nothing special is happening, while unbeknownst to me The Walt Disney Company is having one of its most creative moments since it released Dumbo.

» read more | add to cart

The scene is a minor-league baseball stadium somewhere in the Inland Empire. The broadcasters are Ralph and Jim, a pair of middle-aged sportscasters, who are calling a Class-A game for local radio listeners.

» read more | add to cart

I don’t agree with the saying that laws are made to be broken. That is the attitude of criminals. I believe, rather, that laws are elastic. Like the fan belts in cars, they are made be stretched until they snap.

» read more | add to cart

In commodity futures markets, investors agree to pay a price today for the unknown cost of goods some time in the future. The City of Beverly Hills does not play the futures market, at least to my knowledge.

» read more | add to cart

State prison officials are moving forward with plans to build a new death row at San Quentin, but elected officials and business interests in Marin County are urging the state to reconsider.

» read more | add to cart

Remember the frightening things your mother used to tell you in the name of safety when you were a child? If you went running around with scissors in your hand, you could put out an eye. Or if you went back into the swimming pool too quickly after eating, you could double up with cramps and drown.

» read more | add to cart

The experiences of two developers — one a large-scale master plan developer and the other a smaller, apartment developer — are snapshots of the uneasy relationship between home building and environmental policy in North San Diego County at a time when newly minted environmental laws are racing to keep pace with rapid home building.

» read more | add to cart