New Neighbors

I've written before about the number of useful services within walking distance of my home in "felony flats". We are thrilled to learn that Dave's Olde Book Shop, a used bookstore where we trade in our books, is moving from Manhattan Beach to our neighborhood! Add that to Aardvark's Odd Ark and Cotton Shop, both refugees from pricier Hermosa Beach, and this is a cultural creative paradise.

The downside would be the grittier aspect of living in "Felony Flats". Gunshots were fired at two nearby bars around closing time this year. Note that the bar closest to our home , a gay bar, has much better behaved patrons.

A really cute Spanish-style cottage was bulldozed and developers are putting three townhouses in its place. I am not overly sad about that as, our friendly neighborhood drug dealer lived in that cottage. I was tired of losing my gardening tools to junkies whenever I left them unattended in the front yard even for a minute. Then my belongings would turn up at the perpetual yard sale in front of the dealer's house. Sometimes, buying your own stuff back is less hassle than calling the police and proving that those items were stolen from you*.

And Frank Gehry is moving his office to around the corner from our (work) campus!

* I have never bought anything from that drug dealer, my own stuff or anything else. I am sad to lose my favorite pruning shears and a weed puller thingy from Japan. The ones I have been able to find have not worked so well. I went to a Japanese nursery that sold me the Japanese tool. They told me that their distributor now only imports the cheaper Chinese-made tools as the Japanese ones can't compete on price. Says who? I have used both and I would gladly pay extra for the Japanese one. And why don't we make one in the USA?

MMM ThemeFriday Hometown

This Friday's Me-Made May 2013 theme is our hometowns. That's actually not an easy call in the metropolis of Los Angeles, where one town blends into the next. Is my hometown Los Angeles? The South Bay*? The Beach Cities**? Redondo Beach? The "Felony Flats" (FF) neighborhood of Redondo Beach?

In the end, I decided to show all scales. We took this photo at the corner of McKay and Artesia--where I pick up my CSA box, shop for groceries and hardware and dine. As you can see from the sign, this grocery store serves a diverse clientele.

Have you played around with the North American Census Dotmap?  Each dot represents one person from the US, Mexico and Canada censuses.  You can zoom in and pan around.  Too much fun.

I took a screen shot of Los Angeles, and marked the locations of where people live  in Hollywood movies (sparse whitish areas) and where they live in reality (dark semi-solid blobs).  In the movies, Angelenos drive everywhere because they live so far away from everything.  In reality, Angelenos have the lowest carbon footprint among American cities because .most. people live with incredible density--on par with New York City.


Have you played around with the Walkscore Heat Map of Los Angeles?  You can also zoom in and pan around to explore different regions.  Areas marked in red mean that you can't walk to any services from there.  Areas in green enjoy high walkscores (low walk times) to amenities.  Notice the deep red color of Malibu and Hollywood Hills--home of most Angeleno characters in movies.

Compare that to the Walkscore Heat Map of Felony Flats.  The intersection where we took the photo has a Walkscore of 89 under the old scoring system and 96 (out of 100) under the new system in beta, earning FF the coveted "Walkers' Paradise" designation.

If you play around with both maps, you will notice that some densely-populated areas such as south-central LA endure very low walk scores due to lack of services.  Places that don't generally get much respect in  the media, such as the San Fernando Valley and pockets of the South Bay, enjoy some of the highest amenity levels within walking distance of large populations.

Our family likes our urban places urban and our wild places wild.  I think that is why we enjoy living here so much.

Myrna asked what type of scarves I make out of jersey scraps.  It depends on the shape of the scraps.  For this one, I cut two bias strips and seamed them together to make one long scarf.  Bad Dad managed to take a good shot of the scarf, but caught me with my eyes closed.  You want to see the scarf and my dinner more than you want to see me, right?

I'm wearing a linen shift, Burda 8511.  I've used it to make this dress and several shell-style tops.  Carolyn has made this dress so many times, she gave it it's own label.  Sometimes, you just want a well-drafted basic.

The gray linen comes from SAS Fabrics, an odd-jobber in nearby Hawthorne.  The bolt probably came from a local manufacturer.  I purchased the jersey from Trash For Teaching; they told me that the jersey came from American Apparel's nearby factory.  Many LA-region factories throw leftover materials into T4T barrels rather than trash them.  T4T collects the barrels and then sells the castoffs for $1-2 per pound.  To shop at T4T, you need to be involved in education.  Blogging about sewing from cast-offs counts as teaching.  So does teaching someone (yourself or others) to sew.

* The South Bay is generally considered the area bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west, Interstate highway 405 to the northeast, Los Angeles International Airport to the north, Los Angeles Seaport to the south.  Proximity to a busy international airport and two major seaports attracts many international companies.  In turn, this attracts a diverse and international populace to the South Bay.

** Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo Beaches

Accidental Haul

Iris said that our skirts would not be mommy and me unless we had the exact same waistband elastic. Because I bought the ruffled elastic 20 years ago, I can't get more of the same. I stopped by SAS fabrics on the way home from work.

SAS sells odd lots of fabrics and trims left over from the fashion industry at generally low prices. I took a picture of the trims in the window.

I also took a picture of the zippers (mostly YKK w/ some Talon) before the manager told me that photography is not allowed in the store. Too bad, because the trim aisle is incredible, and incredibly cheap.

I found some elastic for 10 cents a yard, but I came home with a bit more than on my shopping list. Look at the cute penguin crepe de chine. At 99 cents/yard, I expected it to be polyester. The manager says that the piece was sold to them as silk. I thought it had to be very good quality polyester because it felt so much like real silk. At any rate, it would make a good lining. When I got it home and did a flame test, it really was silk. If you want some silk for 99 cents, they have a few other prints in the same barrel, to the right of the door. Maybe the one with basketballs swooshing through a hoop against a black background?

I bought some trims. The entire roll of cotton/rayon grosgrain (so soft) was $4.

I was also on the lookout for more of the snakeskin vinyl that we used as a tablecloth for the last 2 years. (See Stencils Before Dinner for a picture of the tablecloth.) It had finally worn through and ripped in several places. SAS had sold out of the natural/black color. They had purple/black and green/black for $2.99/yd, but they didn't look appetizing. Then I found the entire missing roll of natural/black at the Cotton Shop for $7.99/yd. Actually, I suspect that the Cotton Shop gets some of their fabrics and trims from SAS. I know some people feel too nervous to go to Lawndale to shop at SAS. But, then other people might feel nervous about coming to "felony flats".

I also bought some stuff at Artfibers during my San Francisco trip. The retail prices at the store are significantly higher than on their website. It occurred to me too late, that it would be cheaper and easier to order on-line. Pay the shipping and stop worrying about cramming stuff in my suitcase. But, if I ordered on-line, I wouldn't have seen the tweedy black color, which is so new, it isn't on-line yet. I am going to make Connie's Henley Perfected with the black Alfabeto (silk/superkid mohair/wool).

What the STAR tests really tell us

It is school enrollment and STAR (standardized testing and reporting) season in California so I want to dispel some myths that "everybody knows".

I spent Earth Day, last Friday, sewing with three friends. Between the four of us, we had earned 3 PhDs and were raising 4 kids. Unlike most (famous) education reformers, we had gone to public schools and are sending (or plan to send) our kids to public schools.

Of course, we conversed about standardized testing and NCLB and the limits of what metrics can tell us. Pennamite happens to have a PhD in Education, and she was surprised that anyone paid attention to the standardized test scores. I also wrangle data for a living and we discussed some glaring flaws in the data collection. People who actually looked at the data know that they are a better proxy for parental income and educational attainment than for teacher and school quality.

First, a bit of background.

The California Academic Performance Index, API, is a single number distillation of school performance based upon standardized test scores. The data is further distilled by binning the schools in deciles by API (10 highest, 1 lowest). After criticism that it is too simplistic, a second 1-10 number was introduced to represent school performance against schools with similar demographics, the similar schools rank.

How would you like your work performance reduced to a scale of 1-10 and published on the web with no place to explain the extenuating circumstances?

Magnet Yenta Sandra Tsing Loh (another science-trained mom) observed firsthand how real estate agents attempt to whip home-buying parents into a frenzy with school API and STAR test scores. She wrote a book about it, and privately told me that most of it was absolutely true. Only a small portion was exaggerated for comic effect.

For instance, as local realtors will be happy to point out, everyone knows that the best school district in the beach cities is Manhattan Beach Unified. Redondo Beach schools are a mixed bag, but stay away from gang-infested Adams Middle School in "felony flats" (our neighborhood school). The conventional wisdom had been that, if you must live within the Adams MS boundaries due to the lack of a half million or so in change, get your kids permits to attend Parras MS (in south Redondo Beach) or Manhattan Beach MS instead.

It's not just realtors. I was surprised to meet a new hire at work who spoke so authoritatively about the schools in our region, despite living 30 miles away. I asked her how she knew so much. She had been trolling the school test score websites. She felt like she knew the schools without ever stepping foot on a single campus.

Standardized test scores can give false impressions of schools and a false sense of security that one understands something that is very complex.

To prove that the conventional wisdom about STAR test scores is wrong, I will use--STAR test scores! Yes, I know that is ironic.

Anyway, let's compare the APIs of Manhattan Beach MS (941) with Adams MS (858). Notice the school demographics. MBMS students are 68% non-hispanic whites and AMS is 30% non-hispanic white.

(I am surprised that people will say in polite company that AMS has a gang problem, when there is absolutely no gang activity there. I think they are making assumptions based upon the melanin levels of the kids, but I am too polite to ask that people clarify what they mean by those remarks.)

Let's forget race for now and look at economic and class differences between the schools.

3% of the kids at MBMS are economically disadvantaged compared to 39% of the kids at AMS. 55% of the kids at MBMS have at least one parent with a graduate degree compared to 14% at AMS.

Like I wrote here and here, there is a huge amount of difference between going home to a 4000 square foot home with a full-time housekeeper AND a stay at home mom near parks and the beach and a one bedroom apartment with 5 other people in a neighborhood where kids get shot in the cross-fire in their front yards. It's hard to study effectively in the latter. (Though gang warfare is not a problem inside the AMS boundaries, some of the inter-district transfer students are trying to escape from those nearby neighborhoods.)

Wow, that was a long preamble to my rebuttal to real estate agents and trollers of greatschools.net.

It's late so I will just tackle the parental education angle. Take a look at the statistics for

• All kids at MBMS
• All kids at AMS
• Kids at MBMS with parents with graduate degrees
• Kids at AMS with parents with graduate degrees

The students at MBMS have higher test scores than the AMS. The difference narrows when comparing just the kids with parents with graduate degrees, but MBMS is still slightly higher. But, the language scores can easily be due to the much higher number of English learners at AMS.

Let's look closely at the math scores for just the kids with parents with graduate degrees (henceforth labeled "grad").

All 6th graders at both schools take the CST math test and MBMS edges out AMS with a mean score of 429.9 vs 417.9. But then the results are confounded by the different math classes that kids can take. Actually, let's just look at the data in tabular form.

Math 6, 7 and 8 mean regular math classes. When Bad Dad and I were students in California in the 1970s, the "smart" students took pre-Algebra in 7th grade and Algebra in the 8th grade. The regular kids took pre-Algebra in the 8th grade. 8th grade math was considered remedial. In AMS, the regular kids take pre-Algebra in 7th grade, a year earlier than at MBMS.

(But, Governor Schwarzenegger has moved the goal posts and wants them to push all CA students into Algebra by 8th grade, a year (or more) faster than a generation ago. He also does not make exception for kids with learning disabilities, hence the rush to create Algebra preparedness classes that qualify as Algebra for this purpose--but that's another story in itself.)

There is no standardized test for pre-Algebra so students who take pre-Algebra in 6th grade take the same 6th grade math test as the rest of the kids. Notice that, for all groups and schools, the kids that are accelerated in math score much higher than the students taking the same courses, but a year or so older. That suggests that the accelerated kids really are different than the rest, or that teaching advance math concepts at an early age helps them learn more. Unless we do a controlled experiment, we won't know.

We want kids that are good at math to be accelerated to a level that challenges them. The point of schooling is to teach the kids as much as they are capable of learning--not to maximize mean standardized test scores.

Adams Middle School 2010 STAR results

	# Grad	% Grad	Mean Grad	# All	% All	Mean All
Math 6	42	100	417.9	262	100	375.6
Math 7	23	68	360.1	227	80.5	359.9
Math 8	5	12	*	63	23	312.2
Alg-1 7	11	32	454.8	55	19.5	425.7
Alg-1 8	20	48	371.8	157	58	372.2
Geo 8	17	40	427.2	51	19	433.4
Alg-2	0	0	*	1	0	*

* means the score was withheld for subsets of < 10 students

Manhattan Beach Middle School 2010 STAR results

	# Grad	% Grad	Mean Grad	# All	% All	Mean All
Math 6	247	100	429.9	431	100	415
Math 7	220	88	417.8	414	90	407.3
Math 8	96	47	394.2	241	55	385.8
Alg-1 7	31	12	496.7	44	9.6	496.9
Alg-1 8	87	42	471.7	136	35	470.5
Geo 8	23	11	458.4	36	9.3	456.1
Alg-2	0	0	0	0	0	0

Notice that 77% of all kids at AMS, the school with the lower API ranking and the one labeled by realtors as "worse", met the new standards. Of those, 19% took Geometry in 8th grade, exceeding the new goal and besting their parents by 1-2 years. In contrast, only 45% and 9.3% of the all kids at the "better" school did the same.

Why are only half as many kids in the "better" school taking the same difficult classes as the kids at the "worse" school, despite having the advantage of coming from wealthier homes with better-educated parents?

It's even more dramatic for the "grad" kids. At AMS, 88% of those kids had taken Algebra 1 and 40% of those had taken Geometry while one had taken Algebra 2 (3 years ahead of my generation). In contrast, at MBMS, only 54% of the kids had taken Algebra by 8th grade; of those, 11% made it to Geometry.

Remember that 8th grade math, under the new state standards, is remedial math (though it was par a generation ago). So 55% of the kids in the "better" school took remedial math, including 47% of the "grad" kids. At the "worse" school, it is 23% and 12% respectively.

Most damning, the "grad" kids at MBMS are 4.2 times more likely to take the Math 8 exam than the Geometry exam. At AMS, the "grad" kids are 4.6 times more likely to take the Geometry exam than the Math 8 exam.

Yes, the mean test scores for nearly all subjects and groups is higher at MBMS than at AMS, but the kids are taking different classes and tests! That is, if you move 19.5% of the highest performing kids into pre-Algebra instead of Math 7, the mean test scores for the remaining kids in Math 7 will go down.

A high median test score hides a multitude of sins.

On the flip side, selecting only 9.6% of the kids for pre-Algebra in 7th grade probably allows you to cover more material in the school year. The higher test scores at MBMS in the Algebra and Geometry sequence are a result of this more selective/elitist approach.

Which is better? My conclusion is that neither school is "better". They have different demographics and different philosophies.

But, if you want to increase your kids' chances of being given the opportunity to take more difficult math classes, you might be better off in the cheaper neighborhood with the lower median API scores. You can use the half million of so you save by doing so for sending your kids to college and funding your retirement.

Looking more globally, if you want a student population that has been exposed to more difficult math before college, then the AMS approach will better meet those goals. Study after study has shown that success in college, particularly for under-represented minorities, is strongly correlated with mastery of Algebra. Correlation does not imply causality, but who will come out against taking tougher courses before college?

Addendum:
I've written plenty about educational statistics. Look for the Education and Statistics tags. School Correlations is another lengthy interpretation of school test scores.

Aside:
Additionally, the test scores don't tell you how much class time was devoted to the state standards and preparing for the tests. That is, some teachers may teach the more able student material beyond the state standards. If the standardized tests don't measure those content areas, they won't get credit for their work.

I don't know what happens at MBMS. But, at AMS, the kids taking pre-Algebra skip the 6th grade math text, diving directly into the 7th grade pre-Algebra textbook. (This is possible because of the "spiral learning" vogue in which concepts are repeatedly re-introduced with greater complexity each time. The 4th, 5th and 6th grade math books look cursorily similar because they cover the same territory.)

Adams students see the 6th grade textbook only for the three weeks before the state test, and only to work exercises in a few of the chapters not covered again in the pre-Algebra book. There is some test-prep, but not an excessive amount. I don't consider reviewing 6th grade math in 3 weeks an excessive amount of test prep, especially when the rest of the year is spent accelerating the kids a year ahead in math.

Bad Dad reminded me that MBMS kids are much more likely to be red-shirted in Kindergarten than AMS kids. MBUSD kids are about 6 months older than their RBUSD counterparts in every grade. That's great for athletics and gives a boost in test scores at the primary level, but that puts the MBMS kids even further behind in math.

Don't judge a school by median test scores.

Follow-up:
More thoughts on STAR testing
STAR test scores and external influences

Refashioned Refashioned Skirt

Remember the Refashioned Skirt made from a thrifted pair of jeans? I wasn't happy with the way it hung so I cut the lower part off and remade it. The moderately heavyweight rayon brocade has the necessary heft to hold the yoke in place. It is a vast improvement over the lightweight challis.









The backview.

I bought the fabric intending to make a pantsuit out of it. After this project, I will be lucky to eke out a short jacket and a slim knee-length skirt out of the remainder. Good thing that slim skirts are back in fashion this fall. (Am I the only one who has fashion whiplash? It is a good thing I hung on to all those high-waisted mommy pants.)








The lightweight rayon challis from Refashioned Skirt #1 was itself refashioned this afternoon. Iris wore it on our outing to the Cotton Shop. What led us to stroll over to the Cotton Shop? Iris wanted to make pink ballet slippers for Purrfect Kitty.

She saved up 5 weeks' allowance so that she could go to Build a Bear. She had only enough to buy Purrfect Kitty and one dress. She wanted the back to school backpack set but decided she would have to come back later when she had the money. She also wanted shoes but thought they were overpriced. She asked if we could make some.

The two felt squares set us back 30 cents each plus tax. Iris embellished the slipper with "bows" drawn on with a pink felt tip marker. How I love having such a wonderful independent fabric shop so close to home!

Half of the trim section. Iris is telling me to quit taking pictures and go home already.

A small glimpse of the fashion fabric area.

Part of the home dec area.

Look, another customer also likes the aqua and chocolate brown color combination! She was ahead of me in line but let me go first because she wasn't done making her selection yet.

The view leaving the Cotton Shop.

See this piece of blue sky with the mountains behind it? Click on it to blow it up larger. On a clear day, you can see the Hollywood sign. Take a good look because this view will disappear shortly. Watt Communities is building 6000 sf of retail on the ground floor with three stories of condominiums (48 senior units) above and two levels of parking below. If you do the math, that is six stories. Note the one story surrounding buildings.

Take a look at their sketch. Just half a million dollars and you can own one of these 1-bedroom condominiums on a busy thoroughfare. Note that their website extols the virtues of Redondo Beach and it's picturesque harbor area. It doesn't mention that this corner is 2 miles from the ocean and 4 miles from the harbor in question. The developers also talked the city into zoning the lot to allow for more housing units by arguing that greater density would make the units more affordable.

See how the street drops off a cliff there? That lot backs up to condominiums, a parkette and a storm overflow catchment basin in the valley below. Those condominiums below are three stories tall, but their roofs will be level with the parking garage. The new development will be their neighbor to the south so they may never see sun again.

See the rainbow flag on the bar next to the new condos? It is the only gay bar in the South Bay. Our realtor tried to discourage us from buying in this area. He showed us homes in 'Beryl Heights', 'Alta Vista', 'Golden Hills' and 'the Hollywood Riviera'. He couldn't understand why we kept bidding in 'Felony Flats'. Historically, this is the low rent part of the Beach Cities. It is also the only place where the rents are low enough for cool businesses to thrive.

He pointed out the gay bar and how close it is to our home. Mark and I looked at each other. We had just read Richard Florida's article about The Rise of the Creative Class. His research shows that property values rise faster in neighborhoods that are gay-friendly. Why? Because the creative class prefers diverse neighborhoods. We can walk to many ethnic eateries, food shops, thrift stores and independent art and craft shops (representing 20 different nationalities). There is even an independent hardware store where where one can be waited on by a guy with an engineering degree from Caltech. But that store deserves its own post.

Jacaranda Season 2008 at Chez BadMom

Yeah, my house has a white picket fence. You want to make something of it?

We are drunk with color.



Vandals. Remember Bad Neighbors? That girl and her grandmother no longer live in our neighborhood. Their apartment burned down. Rumor has it, a relative crashing at their place burned it down while free-basing something. This other vandal came well prepared. Notice that the stem is neatly sheared off, not torn.

I have noticed this thing (is it a car?) a few times during my morning commute. I ran into him near work and he said that they are building these prototypes in a nearby building. I didn't know he lived in my neighborhood as well. The neat thing about living in 'felony flats' (aside from the drug dealers), is the number of artists and inventors who live in the hood.

In defense of Home Ec 2

I attended a parent informational meeting about Common Core implementation in our school district. I saw the district superintendent from In defense of Home Ec. The scene was too, too funny and brought to mind Tom Wolfe's classic piece, Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.  If you are not familiar with that piece, I recommend reading it here.

Imagine a room with a very tall white male boss sitting silently while putting three women (flak-catchers) up at the front of the room to deliver bad news to a room full of hostile suburban moms.  All three women hold EdDs and went by Dr So-and-So; two of them are women of color.

I sat in the back, as did many of the other moms I know to be skeptical about the latest educational reforms that would solve world hunger, bring about world peace and an expanding economy for all.
He wants to implement an integrated curriculum?  Let's talk again about how Home Ec can be part of the educational renaissance.

It may not surprise readers that I recycle ingredients in my kitchen as well as in my sewing room.  While we don't eat much meat, I save the bones in a freezer bag.  When we receive a CSA box, I wash and trim the produce as I put it away in the refrigerator.  The scraps go into another freezer bag.  When they are full, I throw them in a stock pot along with garlic, a quartered onion, some aromatic vegetables (carrots, celery, parsley family), herbs and half a lemon.

The acidity from the lemon juice helps dissolve the calcium in the bones, making a calcium-fortified broth.  It also helps bring out the nutrients in the bone marrow.  (I am a lapsed Buddhist; I feel strongly that, as long as you are going to eat dead animals, you should use as much of them as possible.)

Your grandmother didn't need to be taught this.  Recall how many chicken soup recipes include lemons.

When I make stock, I use the pasta insert in my 8 quart stock pot.  When everything has cooked down, I just lift up the solids in the pasta insert to drain and throw them into the compost bin.  Then I strain the liquid concentrated stock.  Yum.

A friend brought back a gift of Herbes de Provence after bike touring in Provence, which I used often in lieu of a "bouquet garni".  Rather than buy more when that supply ran out, I snipped rosemary, thyme, garlic chives, and bay and lemon leaves from my backyard.  I call that "Herbes de Redondo Beach" or "Herbes de Felony Flats" depending on the mood.

I don't have a recent picture of stock-making.  But I snapped a picture when making chicken-cilantro soup recently.  Notice I browned the quarter chicken, skin-side down, before adding the onions.  After the onions browned, I added water and the other ingredients.

When I worked in a chemistry lab, we read the experiments and planned our laboratory time so we can multi-task, yet focus on one thing at a time while other things were on a burner, cooling, or drying in an oven or on the roto-vap.  I do the same thing in the kitchen.

I gathered extra ingredients from the garden and washed then at the same time to make salad dressing while the soup simmered.

As Mark Bittman explained in this video, you can make myriad salad dressings with the formula: a fat, an acid, and flavoring.  I use olive oil and juice from a Meyer lemon from our back yard.

The dressing after blending.

Notice the yogurt maker behind the blender?  I heated the milk in the microwave before starting the soup.  After I got the soup going, the milk had been held at a warm temperature long enough for the remaining steps.  If you don't let the milk rest at a high--but below boiling--temperature for a sufficient amount of time, your yogurt won't set.  That's a lesson in polymer chemistry.

My sister knitted the fair-isle hat for Iris before realizing that Kauni is too scratchy for Iris to willingly wear. Fortunately, the hat fits my EasiYo yogurt maker.

Making yogurt is a good biology project to learn about microbes in different environments.  The air is damp by the beach and contains a little bit of mold.  Yogurt can pick up microbes from the air.  If I keep using the old batch for a starter. they develop a yeasty bread smell.  Not unpleasant, but not yogurt-y.

I need to use 1/4 to 1/3 of a packet of yogurt mix to add fresh L.bulgaricus, S.thermophilus, Bifidobacteria, and L.acidophilus to compete against the local micro-fauna.  The yogurt mix also contains milk powder from free-range cows in New Zealand, adding omega-3 fatty acids to our diet.  By using both milk and milk powder, I add calcium and protein, too.

A morning in the kitchen can provide lessons in project management, geography, ecology, chemistry and biology.  A science experiment you can eat!

February 2008 Rainfall II

The raingauge at Chez BadMom read 1.5" this morning even though it was slightly tilted over. Had it been perfectly upright, it might have held even more water.

The California-Nevada River Forecast Center shows that nearby spots received just under 1" in the last 24 hours. Breathing Treatment also wonders why my gauge readings are a little bit higher than at his house, only a few miles away.

My house is on a relatively flat area about 2 miles from the ocean. Two bands of hills (really sand dunes) stand between us and the ocean so there is no hope of ocean views unless we build an 80 foot tall house. If we were on the seaward side of a hill, we would expect higher rainfall due to orographic forcing. (That's fancy talk for the air moves uphill and the water condenses out of the air as it rises and cools.)

Rob of Are you cereus? explained that the area behind a hill also receives elevated rainfall. The water doesn't condense and start falling right away. In that time lag, the wind will carry the condensing water droplets downwind.

Additionally, the air that comes up and over the dunes can come slamming back downward in a bouyancy wave. So, there is an upside to living in Felony Flats, leeward of 140-160 foot sand dunes (Hermosa View, RB's Golden Hills, Manhattan Hill District and Manhattan Heights. I get more free water falling out of the sky and require less irrigation water.

[Incidentally, developers have been razing the small beach shacks in those areas and erecting massive houses on those sand dunes. Not surprisingly, those homes develop foundation problems very quickly.]

Past posts in the LA rainfall series:
February 2008 Rainfall
When is a moderate drought good news? Lots of rainfall statistics links there.
The whole meteorology thread.

Millions of nobodies

When I mention mass transit in Los Angeles, the most common retort I hear is that no one rides mass transit in LA; we all must drive.  If that is so, then there are millions of nobodies in LA.

We've been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Green Line Extension in our neighborhood. Currently, the Green Line terminus in Redondo Beach is a rather long walk (but easy bike ride) to our home.

KCET's Eric Brightwell wrote about his recent experience exploring the neighborhoods around the proposed Green Line extension.  When I read his piece, I was struck by the ugliness embodied in his photos.  It didn't jibe with my personal experience.  Bad Dad said that the area right around the proposed line is uglier than the surroundings.  But, I went around with new eyes and saw the ugliness in the familiar that my brain masks out.

LA is full of these micro-communities or urban villages.  That may look like just another freeway exit to you, but it leads to a familiar community to those who take that exit ramp.  When I see my exit, I don't see the billboards and utility poles.  My mind sees the people and businesses that make up my home neighborhood.  LA is so diverse, you can travel the world within a 50-mile radius of home.

Anyway, read Brightwell's piece.  I hadn't heard that Torrance is nicknamed Torrance Prefecture for its distinctly Japanese flavor, though I am not surprised.  I agree with his characterization that:

[...] Eastgate Plaza, in my mind, is easily the most appealing shopping center in the region.

Unlike most malls, whose collection of shops varies little from mall to mall, Eastgate Plaza is practically its own J-Town. Currently the mall is home to Bistro Beaux, Matsui, Musha Izakaya, Sushi Nozomi, Teriyaki Inn, and Torihei, and a Mitsuwa Marketplace -- itself practically a mall-within-a-mall that includes Hamada-ya Bakery, Go Squared Takoyaki & Taiyaki, Italian Tomato, J-Sweets, Lupicia, Marion Crepes, Mifune, Santouka Ramen, and Tokyo Ginza Rokumeikan as well as Japanese specialty shops like Video Eye, Books Sanseido, and Trendy.

I would also add that JTB (Japanese Tourist Bureau) has a booth/office inside Eastgate Plaza where you can book trips to Japan at some of the best rates offered anywhere.

Brightwell also remarked upon the diversity of the South Bay.

Definitions of what communities constitute the South Bay vary, but most would include those between the Santa Monica Bay and the 405 Freeway, stretching from Palos Verdes Peninsula in the south to Ballona Creek in the north. It's one of the most diverse regions in the Southland, with significant populations of Canadian, English, Filipino, German, Guatemalan, Indian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, Persian, Salvadoran, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, and West African ancestral origins, which means, of course, that the region also boasts an amazing variety of eateries. It's one of the most physically beautiful regions of the Southland as well, with stunning beaches and incredible views of the ocean. Even the huge oil refineries -- though they regrettably contribute significantly to air pollution -- are captivatingly beautiful in their own way.

Actually, if you zoom in on the 2010 Census map to the South Bay, you can see that certain neighborhoods of the SB (especially my own) are among the .most. diverse neighborhoods in Los Angeles and the entire USA.

Look at the segregation in the entire Westside outside of my neighborhood, which realtors derisively refer to as "felony flats".

I highly recommend the Source blog for all things related to transportation in LA or just mass transit in general.  How else would you gain exposure to construction videos for the Moscow Purple line subway extension?