Robert StGenis Voice empowered

Don't start the series here... To at least be current on topics related to Market Lofts and DTLA, please read:  Love/Hate spec. series #2 ,  Love/Hate spec. series #6 ,  Love/Hate spec. series #7 We lived at the Market Lofts for almost 3 1/2 years virtually not knowing any of our neighbors in this over 260 unit building. We started to get to know one married couple, but he traveled extensively until the pandemic so we literally haven't seen them in probably 2 years at this point. Occasionally, Oliver or Nicole "likes" one of my photos on Instagram or Facebook and a couple of times have Oliver has had comments on topics I have brought up, like last year's celebrations that turned into riots around our home. We know another neighbor upstairs, me more than my husband, but while we keep talking about getting together, but schedules have yet to align. We moved less than 1 mile away in LA for the next year so there is still plenty of time. We just recently met 3 of our ...

  This is written on the morning of June 15, 2021, the day California is lifting restrictions. According to the New York Times, which has been tracking with at least daily updates throughout the pandemic, as of 6/14/2021, California has had 3,803,531 cases or 9,626 per 100,000 residents. According to the US Census Bureau, as of April 1, 2020, the population of the Golden state is 39,538,223. Based on these numbers, roughly 10.4% of the state's population had a positive Covid-19 test. Some argue how cases are counted, whether someone who has more than one positive Covid-19 test is being counted more than once, but then again, there are those laying on their death bed with Covid-19 insisting it does not exist. This resulted in 63,149 deaths or 160 per 100,000 people. You would think it's harder to argue deaths, though as I just mentioned above, not only do some people deny COVID really exists, but some say things like "well they had a heart condition, had cancer..." The...

Downtown Los Angeles is a "district" which is rather small, only encompassing shy of 6 square miles of the 503 square mile city boundaries. Basically, a little more than 1%. When I first moved to Los Angeles in the late 90s I would joke with visitors that the skyscrapers in Downtown were there as a stage set really so that you could have an easily identifiable location shot. Unless you needed city hall, had to go to court or went to see the opera (and some theatre), there was little other reason to go there unless your job was there. You might have well packed your own lunch or nosh as restaurants were hard to come by as well. Then, as LA moved into the 21st Century and the city adapted some new laws to allow repurposing of abandoned buildings that had been sitting for decades, things began to change.  The 2000 Census found that 27,849 people lived in Downtown. City estimates that the population grew to about 35,000 in 2008. Census data moved that number to over 40,000 by 201...

I first started hearing about Atlanta as a child in the late early 1980s. Our neighbors in Michigan moved to some place called Dunwoody. A place I am quite familiar with now and imagine was significantly smaller back in the day. I recall they built a home and were overwhelmed with the amount of natural wood used inside on trim and such and the attention to detail the builder put into satisfying their desires. Mr. Riley proclaimed something like “if you don’t like the moldings, they just rip them out and start over” - I don’t think they would find that as easily to be the case today. They also might be scraping into Dunwoody now, not building a custom home from West Bloomfield today. West Bloomfield and Dunwoody are somewhat similar in both being more affluent suburbs. According to Zillow, however, the average home price in Dunwoody is $502,716 and West Bloomfield the average is $348,508.  While West Bloomfield definitely did grow from the time the Rileys left and when my family lef...

This is Part Three in a mini-series: Los Angeles. Love/Hate Relationship. A Tale of Two Cities in my series Los Angeles. Love/Hate Relationship . If you haven't already, be sure to read:  Tale of Two Cities. Part One and Part Two . When you have a chance, the entire series starts at:  Los Angeles. Love/Hate Relationship. Part One.   It is almost incomprehensible to believe that when I decided to make a stop on December 6, 2020 and grab a drink it would be the 1st time I had enter the indoors of a gay bar in at least 9 months. I am not exactly sure when it was earlier but it would have to had been while we were in Great Britain in late February and early March before California began to lockdown for what is becoming eternity. We are not big bar goers, in fact my husband doesn't drink. But, he is usually up for a bar with an "event" like a drag show or bingo and we usually make an "appearance" at a bar if visiting somewhere. We "live" to travel an...

  Market Lofts Condominiums. This is Part Two in a mini-series: Los Angeles. Love/Hate Relationship. A Tale of Two Cities in my series Los Angeles. Love/Hate Relationship .  At a minimum, be sure to read:  Tale of Two Cities. Part One  before reading this post. When you have a chance read the entire series starting at:  Los Angeles. Love/Hate Relationship. Part One. I entered the building and there was Ricardo, our security guard, who had just recently "turned me in" to our management for creating a nuisance violation for use of words of offensive language. He sat with his somehow perfectly naturally sparkling white teeth and smiled at me with such a "shit eating grin" it took everything to avoid what I wanted to say to someone I had previously considered a great member of our staff as I looked at him stare at me  with his bleached teeth and smug smile. The pandemic has made life challenging for everyone, day-to-day at the Market Lofts being no exceptio...

Midtown Atlanta I am making this a "sub-series" within the series on my Love/Hate  series  of Los Angeles.  I descended back into the City of Angels on December 29 after being in Atlanta since December 1. While Los Angeles went further and further into lockdown, I was able to eat indoors in restaurants, and go to bars, go to the gyms indoors and sit in a hot tub or sauna while in Georgia. I couldn't go to the movies, a museum or theatre. There were restrictions in medical offices, some greater than here, which I learned as I took my father to a number of appointments. Some schools were completely open, others hybrids, others yet online only. I went and looked at properties to purchase with an agent, albeit socially distancing and with masks on. I attended open houses with limits on numbers of people in the property, social distancing and again masks. But all in all, life was as normal as it could be with a pandemic never seen in our history. On occasion, I found plac...

To really understand most of this blog entry, you really need to read:  Someone homeless in your house ,  Tony's first days back...  and  Tony incognito #1  prior to this entry.Read the messages in reverse, as they are Tony's replies to my messages. When Tony did come and received the IRS check he all but fell to his knees in thanks. I forget why, but I didn't have it at the front desk and I had him come to the door, just not inside. Later, he seems to have a very different memory.  Date: Mon 11 May 2020 Subject: RE: re: We have a package of something you ordered05:12 PM We also received something from the IRS for you. I will leave both at the front desk. ~~~~~~~~~ Tony wrote: Thank u! Ive been around elsinore still waiting for covid to stop ruining things. Ill try and grab that day after tomorrow unless im.up there manana ~~~~~~~~~ Robert wrote: It looks like something that may have come from wish. Where are you? What is up? Subject: re: We have a ...

Be sure you have read  Los Angeles. Love/Hate. Part 3  ,  Los Angeles. Love/Hate. Part 2  , and  Los Angeles. Love/Hate. Part 1  prior to reading this post... My ex, Bart, and I, along with our 2 cats, Chloe and Zuma, loaded up my roughly 8 year old Volvo 740 station wagon, which I had recently bought from my stepmother, and drove from Capitol Hill in Washington, DC and headed to West Hollywood. We left right after Christmas planning to arrive in West Hollywood for New Years Day 1997. Bart had bought me this stuffed Energizer Bunny for Christmas so we took it along the way and took pictures of it at given destinations on our journey. Mind you, we didn't have smart phones, but film cameras, so we only took so many and not all were worthy of keeping. Not to mention, I was a little overzealous spring cleaning a year or so ago.   We went through parts of Shenandoah National Park crossing through Virginia. We drove to, but didn't go into Dollywood (I wasn't...

Since the first time I had ever rented anywhere to live, I seldom lived in an actual "apartment." and only once in one owned by a large company and it isn't even in the "big 10" in LA (companies like Avalon, Palmer, Equity, etc). My first 2 years of college in Vermont I lived in a dormitory in a school of 500 students. I guess that was a quasi-management situation. There was no other option. I also lived in a dorm in my second year, when I transferred to university at Concordia in Montreal and was among the few as almost all lived off campus. They converted 2 apartment houses into dorms. We only had dorms for a few hundred students in those buildings out of 25,000 students so it was more like an unlikely co-ed fraternity than a managed setting. I left and lived in an apartment briefly with a boyfriend which might have been a "managed building", but it was his lease and I was only there a couple of months. We then rented a 2nd story of a 2 unit building...

Los Angeles had been beaten and battered in the few years leading up to my arrival. Starting in 1991, the Los Angeles basin shed over 200,000 jobs, primarily in the aerospace industry. Military bases were closed throughout Southern California. I've later learned much more about how this largely changed Southern California's "landscape" and diminished our middle class. The  Northridge earthquake of 1994  was one of the most costly natural disasters in US history.  I remember watching coverage on television. While there are cracks and shifts in buildings from the earthquake to this day and I remember noting some minor damage on trips to LA in 1996 prior to my moving, in reflection I have to say it was amazing how quickly things overall were repaired. But, it's impact did contribute to people leaving the region and a decline in prices. The earthquake occurred less than 2 years following the  1992 Los Angeles riots , which arguably was far more devastating to ...

Designer jeans started to become a fad - which has evolved into a mainstay of American fashion to this day - starting around when I was in 3rd grade. Gloria Vanderbilt  was the pioneer of the industry, creating a line of denim jeans for women bearing her signature on the back right pocket and a swan on the front right pocket. The audience targer for these jeans were geared towards women, not girls. So people like my teachers and Mother. At this point, I don't think my Mother even owned a pair of denim anything. My Father had always looked at jeans as something for farm workers and other "laborers." Some of our teachers did get pairs, but to this point, the idea of jeans on a teacher at school was definitely not part of the dress code. I think Mrs. Edwards, our school Librarian, might have led the "charge for change" and been the first to take that leap and wear designer jeans to work. Keep in mind that women wearing pants was relatively new in the work pla...

Before or even after (in this case) this post, read  My First Text Book on how it is done . Before moving forward with my early pubescent stories with my buds, I should take a step back and give you at least the simple basics of how we all came 'together' initially. All of us had attended Green Elementary School and at this point were in 6th grade at Orchard Lake Middle School. Richie lived on the same street, Andy was two houses up on the adjacent street and David lived in the same subdivision. He was much closer to the middle school and far further from the elementary school where Richie, Andy and I had walked to daily. Richie was literally a few houses and a crossing guard away. Andy and I had a brief walk. My Mother picked our house in part so she could watch me through the kitchen window walk to school to give some reference. I don't honestly know if David did or not walk to Green. It seems a bit far at that age. But, it was a different era so parents were much more ...

I was on the phone with someone at USAA about my insurance and he asked me "how do you like L.A.?" Noting his genuine curiosity, I paused for a moment. I responded "it's a perfect place to have a love/hate relationship with; if you have never been, you should come." I gave an explanation of how it was vast and amazingly different than most anywhere else, but hard to get around, expensive but you at least most often convinced yourself worth it, and usually the weather is amazing. I have lived here most of my adult life, with brief times in the city of Riverside (the Inland Empire a large extension of L.A.) and the Coachella Valley (Palm Springs), a nearby getaway. A friend of mine from Berlin whom I have known some 30 years said to me years ago visiting me that L.A. was "one of the most unique cities in the world." I don't think that it was his first trip to L.A. when he said this to me. He has been back multiple times and repeated it since and he...

My parents had a lot of really nice furniture. My Mother would leave a room empty for as long as 2 years to save for what she really wanted to own. She died with most of those "prized" pieces of furniture that became part of my home in childhood. Such a different era. My Dad had a cabinet in his den that in retrospect I kind of wish I had now. It was a really nice piece of furniture. The top and sides were I want to say dark walnut. The front had a door with a woven raised walnut (assuming I have the right wood) front between a 2-3" black/dark brown crossed pattern on each side. I think there was something hand-carved in the middle as well. It had one of those old locks with a key like from "Colonial" times yet there was nothing colonial about the piece. The television in the den sat on top of that cabinet, one more reason it was a focal point. Around 12, in sixth grade, I became scarily curious about most everything. What is under the TV I wondered?...