We just took a major financial hit when Trader Joe’s, which built its brand selling cheap booze, steeply taxed our Great Recession go-to-beer, bouncing the price from $2.99 to $3.49 a six. The unexplained and outrageous near 20 percent leap was rolled out so stealthily the chipper clerks aren’t hip to it

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Nicotine fiend nurses on smoke break aside, unless you’re stumbling to the Kaiser Medical Center emergency room, no one has any business along Barnsdall Avenue in Hollywood. Running along the ass end of the Hollyhock House of Frank Loyd Wright

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We sorely miss chowing down on the occasional half chicken/fried rice combo at a ubiquitous Bronx bulletproof Chinese joint. Now this image of a high priced wing purveyor in our nation’s capitol has us wondering; could variants of the plexi-enclosed hole in the wall take off in LA as a novel  foodie trend? Would make an uber-ironic statement in say Silver Lake. Ain’t seen one since landing here, but let us know if it exists. And for such inspiration our thanks to crack smoking former DC mayor Marion S. Barry, Jr. ‏ @marionbarryjr

Fred Who? Meet the First Gay Presidential Candidate

We can’t walk down the stretch of Hollywood Boulevard a bit east of the tourist joints without growing wistful with thoughts of the Deuce back in the day. We appreciate the pageant of down and outs from nearby SRO’s like the Mark Twain, crusty punks down from Seattle for bum break, and LA’s ethnic melange of thugs all mingling amid the backdrop of tatoo joints, a couple edgy bars( Legman’s music editor-at-large Chris Namon was recently carried out of dive Loaded by an ugly mob) and the grease stink of crap eats.  Now  the Hollywood experience is usually Times Square light, but violence has been ticking up, especially after the douchey clubs let out from Thursday through Sunday. Last night under the Halloween spirit lent cover to a spectacular flare up of beat-downs. This reminds us that the old Times Square was no great shakes. And If you avoid the boulevard, you ain’t missing anything.

Popped into our default late night booze purveyor Rite Aid, scoring that nite cap to fuel the solitary act of writing into the early morning and this tune surprisingly playing in that emptied flourescent Eggleston venue made our night; Many Rivers To Cross had us joining in with Lenny Kravitz in front of the wall of beer, as did a shell shocked rocker who had admirably downed a Modelo tall boy, putting the empty back into the case

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Yosi Sergant’s coyly named Manifest Equality show, his first spectacle since getting run out on a rail from DC, came and went this past week. And while he’s still not forthcoming with the scoop on his brief tenure( “I don’t kiss and tell” Yosi told the Legman) the former National Endowment for the Arts spokesman gave LA an idea of the potential lost to the White House, producing an ambitious charity show of art inspired by a message of gay rights and filling the massive (you can fly a helicopter around in there) former Big Lots space in Hollywood with the graphic art that flourishes here. Predictable pieces by Swoon and Shep Fairey were overshadowed by some strong work; we liked  Patrick Martinez’ painterly portraits of ice cream-eating gang-bangers and Scot Lefavor’s insightful image of ranger-buddy National Guard troopers. Nothing here on par with the sensual social realism of New York painter Paul Cadmus, but the swell crowd Yosi and colleague Jennifer Gross drew made the opening a blast.

Raimund Abraham 1933-2010

It will be unnerving hopping on our next bus since architect Raimund Abraham was killed in Downtown LA Wednesday night. His car collided with a Metro bus at 5th and Main after lecturing at the Southern California Institute for Architecture. We once had a college room mate totally enamored with the easily quotable visionary-“Pratt (Institute) is BULLSHIT” was a favorite- who appeared to have walked out of a Werner Herzog film; the Austrian emigrehad not actually built a building until he was nearly 70 years old when he completed the 25 foot-wide Austrian Cultural Forum on East 52nd Street in 2002. There will be a tribute to the architect in NYC on 24 March.

When we decided to head to elegant Santa Anita race track for a much needed change of luck (a recent finger crushing incident working on our veteran NYC bike messenger track bike has kept us from posting) Legman was thrilled to find Saturday  a promotion day marking the track’s 75th anniversary, with park visitors getting a bad-ass wall clock. But the time displayed on Santa Anita’s web site floored us. The hands on the promotional keep sake? Not at  the 10:10 every art director knows to best engage an audience, but rather  the clock face displays a time taken to heart by the good people of Los Angeles, originating in cannabis culture.