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Two local designers create art you can wear, weaved from the lives they have led

by Casey Parker 

 Love, death, decadence and a long road traveled back to its beginning are among the elements at play in the accessories created by two local designers.

Bill McCrea earned his childhood allowance cleaning his grandfather’s hair salon, Mack’s, in Manhattan Beach. Attending Catholic school with two younger brothers, McCrea never dreamed of following his family’s footsteps and becoming a third generation hairdresser.

After art school, McCrea craved a tropical adventure and flew to Hawaii.  The luxurious Aloha spirit of the 1970s made it impossible to leave. Not having a house or a proper job didn’t stop an independent flower child. McCrea built a tree house and got a job working as an assistant in a psychiatric hospital.

 As the 1970s came to a close, McCrea left his island dream. A friend reminded him life was for the living and complacency leads to boring and dared him to leave paradise for the free-thinking, indulgent San Francisco. After enjoying the music, art, and nightlife the city had to offer, McCrea still had a little voice in his head reminding him hairdressing was a career that embraced his past and offered a way to live creatively.

So to the delight of McCrea’s grandfather and father he returned to the South Bay in 1983 and attended beauty school. Today, he is the owner of Rumba Hair Studio in Redondo Beach.  

 On many runways today we see designers emulating the boho chic styles of 1970s. Since McCrea was there, the feathered flower hair accessories he makes celebrate the look. Beauty inspires confidence, McCrea says, and every women smiles when she sees herself in the mirror with a tropical bit of Janis Joplin elegantly placed upon her head.

“I believe in the transformative power of beauty,” McCrea says.

Gemma Del Rio was born into art. Her mother, Gemma Taccogna, was a renowned artist from Mexico City and moved little Gemma there when she was only nine months old. Latin culture’s vibrant colors, warm sun, and her mother’s love molded Del Rio into the artist she is today. Her fresh sense of design and color are highlighted in her line of hand painted silk scarves and fused glass jewelry. Most recently, her work was featured on Good Day LA. Debbie Reynolds’ face glowed as if the painted peacock feathers on the scarf gave off light.

 Del Rio’s mother passed in 2007. Instead of wallowing in grief, Del Rio felt compelled to use what she’d learned from her mother and create inspired works of art. When one ties on one of her scarves or places on a piece of fused glass, one can almost feel the Latin sun and see the swirl of  traditional Mexican dance skirts that made such a strong impression on Gemma in her youth.

“It doesn’t matter what you create,” her mother told her long ago. “It’s that you are living with dignity, you’re living with principal, you are living with passion, with honor. And you have a visual statement of your bravery.”

McCrea’s floral creations are available at Rumba, 1830 S. Elena Ave. in Redondo Beach. Del Rio’s scarves and jewelry are available at Annie’s Boutique 722 Yarmouth Road, Palos Verdes Estates, or by contacting her directly at gdelrio53@hotmail.com.

 

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by Dennis Colonna

As massive earthquakes strike Haiti and Chile, and cautious officials issue tsunami advisories even on our own local shores, the question resurfaces: When will the Big One strike here?

Top seismologists warn that a great quake, one measuring 7.5 or greater on the Richter scale, is sure to one day shake Southern California with a destructive force much greater than that of Hurricane Katrina. The Big One, they say, will make the 1971 San Fernando Valley Earthquake and the 1994 Northridge Earthquake look like fender benders.

Speculation about the looming great quake tends to focus upon the southern section of the San Andreas Fault, which experts say is long overdue for a shaker in the 7.8 range or higher that could lay waste to much of the area with an initial shock lasting minutes, not just seconds.

But other Big Ones may lurk below our own geologically-fragile area, waiting to roar up from a number of smaller faults that snake underground around the South Bay. While these faults might not be as famous or as publicized as the mighty San Andreas, they could still produce a damaging earthquake almost as impressive as the granddaddy fault.

Thrust faults

A small 4.7 magnitude quake on the Newport Inglewood fault that rattled the South Bay last May drew little media attention, but it alarmed seismologists because it occurred on one of the most dangerous “thrust faults” near the South Bay.

A number of thrust faults – in which the earth’s plates ride on top of one another rather than side by side – underlie the Los Angeles basin. Like the Newport Inglewood, many of the thrust faults run nearby or directly underneath the beach cities.

The Newport Inglewood is also the fault responsible for a 6.4 magnitude Long Beach earthquake that took 115 lives and caused some $50 million in property damage in 1933, prompting more stringent building codes within our seismically active state.

Susan Hough, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena, keeps a wary eye on the fault, which runs roughly from Newport Beach to Beverly Hills. She and other seismologists believe the fault zone is capable of producing a Big One of 7.5 on the Richter scale. The magnitude would be dependent on just how much of the fault moves during any given event.

A 7.5 earthquake along the dangerous fracture would cause intense shaking throughout the Los Angeles basin, including the South Bay, for as long as a minute, and possibly longer.

Residents would then have to contend with numerous aftershocks, at least one of which would measure merely one unit less in magnitude than the main temblor. The aftershocks would subside in number as the days go by and, normally, decrease in size.

Shifting sand

Tom Henyey, professor emeritus in the Earth Sciences Department at USC and retired director of the Southern California Earthquake Center, also casts a wary eye on the Newport Inglewood Fault.

“We know it’s active, and has moved before,” he said.

And because there is a lot of younger rock underlying our area — with large segments of communities built over old sand dunes — the shaking from the Big One on the San Andreas or a nearby fault, like the Newport Inglewood, would be greatly exacerbated.

“The beach cities have folds of sediment that would just magnify the shaking. And there could be landslide issues along hillsides,” Hough said.

Concerns about the Newport Inglewood Fault have grown since the small event in the spring of last year, with its epicenter near Lennox.

“We are pretty certain that the quake occurred on the Newport Inglewood fault,” Hough said.

Was the quake a foreshock to something bigger? While statistical averages indicate that a foreshock usually occurs within a 48-hour to five-day window of a major temblor, the 1989 San Francisco quake proved there are exceptions to this general rule.

One year before the deadly World Series Earthquake struck Northern California in 1989, a 5.0 earthquake occurred near the main temblor’s epicenter. So the possibility that the northern section of the Newport Inglewood is getting ready to premiere a bigger attraction can’t be totally dismissed, and seismologists are continuing to monitor it closely for any other evidence that might indicate it’s getting ready to rock and roll.

“Any time you have an earthquake on a given fault, you have the possibility of having more earthquakes in the near future,” Hough said.

The San Fernando Valley’s 1994 Northridge quake, one of the largest and most damaging quakes to hit an urban area of North America in recent geological history, occurred on one of those puzzling and infamous blind-thrust faults. When it unleashed its 25 seconds of fury on that fateful morning of Jan. 17, 1994, it killed 72 people, injured 9,000 and caused an estimated $20 billion in property damage, making it one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.

Trouble on the hill

To the west of the Newport Inglewood Fault, running along the Palos Verdes Peninsula, is the equally disturbing Palos Verdes Fault. The fault sprints along the hills of the peninsula and extends out to sea along Hermosa and Manhattan Beach. Based on the length of the fault, seismologists like Hough believe that it too could produce an earthquake as high as magnitude 7.0.

Other faults running through the South Bay area are the Redondo Canyon and Torrance Wilmington thrust faults, both of which are capable of generating quakes in the 6.0 to 6.5 range. While geologists consider them active, they don’t know when they might have last ruptured. Nevertheless, they are capable of causing significant damage if and when they snap.

Trigger effect

Another concern among seismologists is the possibility of an earthquake on one fault triggering an earthquake on a nearby adjacent fault: the trigger effect.

“There is the possibility that any significant-sized earthquake on the Palos Verdes Fault could trigger another large or larger earthquake on an offshore fault like the lengthy Coronado fault zone,” Hough warned. She said that would create an entirely different and possibly more dangerous and complex scenario.

Meanwhile, if the Redondo Canyon Fault – which lies just offshore of the South Bay – should come alive and produce a seismic event, it, too, could trigger an earthquake on the PV fault zone. 

Henyey, a Palos Verdes resident, has closely studied the Palos Verdes Fault and has determined that its slip rate is occurring at three to four millimeters a year. And with each year that passes – with minimal slippage along the fault – the chances increase that any seismic event that does occur could reach a higher magnitude.

The southern tip of the Palos Verdes Fault runs offshore into the Los Angeles Harbor, crosses the San Pedro shelf, bypassing the oil platforms, and then dives into deeper water continuing about two thirds of the way to San Diego.

But according to Henyey, the northern section is a bit more perplexing. What he does know is this: The northern section of the fault runs from Rat Beach and continues offshore into Manhattan Beach, angling towards the Malibu area, where it might connect with or butt up against another dangerously troublesome fault: the Santa Monica.

“There are very few earthquakes that we can pin on the PV Fault. The geology is so complicated. Much of the fault zone has been covered up by development,” Henyey said. 

“Small earthquakes of magnitude 2.0 to 3.5 have had their epicenters in the South Bay area since the 1950s that may or may not have occurred on the PV Fault,” he said. “But to our knowledge there hasn’t been a significant-sized earthquake on the fault in the past 500 years – but then, our data only goes back that far.”

Like his fellow earthquake hunters,  Henyey remains most concerned with the San Andreas Fault, particularly the section near Palm Springs, where the stress has built up to a level that makes a major earthquake inevitable – something earth scientists have been warning us about for years.

Yet more trouble

Dr. Egill Hauksson, seismologist and senior research associate in geophysics at the USGS, believes that another fault, the Compton Fault, is also capable of producing a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. Recent research has indicated that there have been at least six magnitude 7.0 to 7.4 earthquakes on that fault within the last 14,000 years, and some seismologists believe that the last slippage along the fault zone was as recent as the last 700 to 1,400 years.

But Hauksson, like many of his colleagues, is most concerned with the southern section of the San Andreas, near the Coachella Valley in Palm Springs. He foresees a possible earthquake of 7.8 if enough of the fault slips at one time.

And he thinks that the destruction could be as great, in some areas of Los Angeles, as was seen in most sections of Haiti: a disturbing scenario in spite of the fact that California has some of the most stringent seismic building codes in the world. We simply have not experienced the worst case scenario earthquake, yet, to know just how well most structures will hold up.

“We could have high rise buildings in downtown Los Angeles collapsing,” he warned.

Sure thing

It is not a matter of if that great earthquake occurs, but when.

Hough, who is also author of a new book on earthquakes, Predicting the Unpredictable, said, “Since the time geologists first came down to the area in the 1920s, leading scientists have been making predictions that the state would be rocked by a major quake.

“It is going to happen some day. That much we can say with certainty. It may not happen for another 30 years, or it could happen tomorrow. We live in earthquake country. The Los Angeles area was built on top of many huge faults. And when it comes to earthquakes, there is no place to hide in California.”

Hough suggests that Southern Californians maintain an adequate supply of bottled water, canned food and extra flashlights because a major quake on the San Andreas or any of its sister faults could interrupt the water supply for as long as a month or more, with other utilities being indefinitely affected.

And for those who think the warnings about a major earthquake are overblown, the sobering truth is this: The farther we are from the last big earthquake, the closer we are to the next. As far as a major earthquake is concerned, we are living on borrowed time.

For more information on earthquake faults underlying the Los Angeles basin and their projected magnitudes, see data.scec.org. ER

by Robb Fulcher

The City Council expressed a collective will to ask future municipal employees to shoulder part of the costs of their pensions and health benefits, a move suggested by Councilman Howard Fishman during his election campaign last year.

The matter was discussed at a Thursday meeting in which council members took preliminary steps to put together a lean budget for the next fiscal year, whcih begins this summer.

Council members also reached informal consensus for continuing to consider street paving a funding priority.

City Manager Steve Burrell pointed out that the municipal government has begun feeling the effects of the recession that was felt by residents and businesses quite a bit earlier.

“This year, probably more so than last year for the cities, we’re seeing the impact of the recession,” he said.

Councilman Kit Bobko said the city must seek to trim ongoing costs like pension contributions, which continue after an employee has retired.

“The legacy costs are really what I think is the anchor around the city’s neck,” he said.

The city would seek the employee cost sharing during salary negotiations with employee groups.

Councilman Jeff Duclos said he embraces the cost sharing concept.

“I’m very concerned about these legacy costs,” he said.

Fishman said “there is a groundswell of support” for the cost sharing.

Individual council members also introduced a variety of possibilities for cutting costs or raising revenues that might be discussed further as the budget talks continue.

Fishman, the retired risk manager of Manhattan Beach, said money from pet license fees increased to that city when, as head of animal control, he hatched a program to “find volunteers or parking officers on rainy days and have them canvass for pet licenses.”

The canvassers located pet owners by knocking on doors and looking for pet bowls and “beware of dog” signs.

“We doubled the licensing revenue in a year and a half just by canvassing,” Fishman said.

Mayor Michael DiVirgilio said with employee salaries claiming the lion’s share of shrinking revenues, the city could ask employee groups to take pay cuts.

“And I know that’s harsh, but it would require only a small-percentage reduction that would help us meet the [revenue] gap almost immediately,” he said.

DiVirgilio introduced the subject with little hope of an enthusiastic reception, saying, “This will probably go over like a lead balloon.”

Duclos said he wants further study of a city hiring freeze that includes five vacant Police Department positions, which decreases the patrol force by 18 percent. He said taking police off the streets could lead to a perception the city is less safe, which in turn could lower property values and property tax revenues.

“I was greatly concerned about the number of cuts as they relate to the police department,” he said.

“I say this because for me, the thing that drives the city is our property tax, and it’s totally based on what the perceived value of our city is to our residents. If we don’t do anything to drive that value, if we sit by passively and watch it deteriorate, because of any perceived sense that we’re not a safe city…then it’s like a house of cards,” Duclos said.

He mentioned an unfilled firefighter position along with the five police positions and said, “I think we have an obligation to figure out how to fill those where we can.”

DiVirgilio agreed that the city should look deeper into the hiring freeze and its cost savings. Eight positions remain unfilled outside the police and fire departments as well.

Duclos and Fishman mentioned the possibility of revisiting potential increases in the license fees paid to the city by businesses, a notion that raised hackles when former Councilman Michael Keegan proposed the first such increases in Hermosa in nearly three decades.

Fishman said any discussion of business license increases would have to involve the business community “from the start.”

Duclos said, “I’m not suggesting we plunge into that tonight, but that’s a matter that is going to be revisited at some point.”

Councilman Pete Tucker suggested reviewing fees for parks and recreation use.

Fishman repeated his suggestion that the rest of the council join him and Duclos in turning down a car allowance, health insurance and a separate stipend which they receive from the city.

“If we’re asking employees to take a hit and not get increases or what have you, then I just want the residents to know that some of the council is willing to do that as well,” Fishman said.

The week before, the City Council approved mid-year adjustments to the current budget that include the hiring freeze. ER

by Robb Fulcher

A Hermosa restaurant owner has been charged with battery for allegedly striking another man with a thrown object. The man who was struck had a heart attack and died shortly afterward, police said.

Authorities investigated the possibility of a murder charge against Nael Yousef Diab, 50, owner of Poulet Du Jour on Pacific Coast Highway. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to charge him with murder, and instead the city prosecutor filed a charge of battery, police said.

Reached at his restaurant, Diab referred questions to his attorney.

“My client has been in business in Hermosa Beach for years, he is very well known, and he looks forward to going to court and having all these charges dismissed,” said attorney Michael Norris.

Norris said he had not seen police reports on the case and could not discuss it in detail.

Police said witnesses told them the incident began when Amr Ahmed Ramadan, 42, of Los Angeles, was sitting outside a restaurant near Poulet Du Jour, talking with a group of people. Ramadan made disparaging remarks about a theft of money that Diab had suffered, police said, and Diab was speaking with one of the group via telephone and overheard the remarks.

In the theft, Diab had lost more than $100,000 that had been inside a van he owns, police said.

Witnesses told police Diab showed up in a van and hopped out, holding a wine bottle, which was wrestled away from him. Then Diab picked up a large plastic bread crate and hurled it at Ramadan, striking him in the shoulder and head, police said.

Ramadan drove away, but a couple minutes later told a passenger he was having chest pains. Then he suffered the fatal heart attack, police said. ER

by Robb Fulcher

Police said they made an arrest and recovered stolen cosmetics following a theft at the CVS store on Pacific Coast Highway in which the suspect backed his vehicle into an employee during his getaway. The employee was not injured.

Police responded to a call regarding “unknown trouble” at the store about 4:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 26. A store employee told officers that a man had just stolen some merchandise, and when the employee ran out and stood behind the getaway vehicle, the man backed into the employee.

The employee got the license plate, and meanwhile a passerby saw the getaway unfold and followed the vehicle, confirming the license plate, make and model before losing sight of it in Redondo Beach, police said.

Hermosa detectives hurried to the store and used the information to discover their suspect’s identity, and officers went to a home in Long Beach and arrested a 32-year-old man.

As they searched his gold 2006 Chrysler Sebring he told detectives, ‘The items you’re looking for are in the black bag,’ said Detective Mick Gaglia.

Detectives also found “a specific list for cosmetics that matched the items reported stolen from CVS and ultimately recovered from his vehicle,” Gaglia said. ER

by Robb Fulcher

Police said two dogs that allegedly attacked and killed a third, small dog were likely to be euthanized this week. Their owner turned them over to a shelter.

The two dogs – Jack, a black Lab mix and Stella, a black Portuguese water dog – allegedly killed a white Maltese dog named Mercedes as she was being walked by a woman in the area of 30th Street and Ingleside Drive about 9 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 25, police said.

The bigger dogs turned on a woman who tried to fight them off, and she suffered an aggravation of an existing back injury as she escaped them, police said.

The owner was cited for allegedly having a vicious dog at large. Police said he had been cited previously for having a dog at large, after the same two dogs injured another dog and bit a person at Hermosa Valley Park on June 8, 2009.

The owner turned the dogs over to animal control authorities in Carson as animals that cannot be controlled, police said. ER

by Robb Fulcher

While some real estate experts herald a dawning comeback in the housing-sales market, the jigsaw of hotly competing brokerage firms in the beach cities will soon be rearranged. The Palos Verdes-based Re/Max Sanders Group plans to acquire the 28-year-old Re/Max Beach Cities, which filed for bankruptcy protection last week. And the Palos Verdes office of the international firm Sotheby’s has leased an office in downtown Manhattan Beach.

Asked about the coming incursions, two competitors with established offices in the beach cities focused their attention on the Sotheby’s move, which will add a new brokerage office in Manhattan’s downtown in the spring. Partners in both locally-owned powerhouses, Shorewood Realtors and South Bay Brokers, said they doubt whether an international firm can make waves in their stomping grounds, while a partner in Sotheby’s said the “global reach” and expertise of an international firm is exactly what the area needs.

Market toll

A steep decline in the housing market in recent years was cited as a major factor in the Re/Max reshuffle, in which the 25-year-old Palos Verdes Execs franchise will buy Marquee Partners, which owns Re/Max Beach Cities in Manhattan Beach and five other offices throughout the South Bay and high-end communities on the west side of greater L.A.

In a Feb. 11 letter addressed to agents, Kelli Todd, owner of Re/Max Marquee Partners and daughter of its former guiding force Bob Todd, said the downturned real estate market was part of a “perfect storm” that “has broken the back” of Marquee Partners.

“To start with the most obvious [factor], there has been a dramatic year-over-year downturn in our markets for the better part of the last decade, along with Realtors leaving the business. This has resulted in a substantial decline in revenue to the company as well as to other real estate companies throughout the nation,” she wrote.

“While cash flow remains feasible, there remains a large debt burden on [the company]. As you know, this economic crunch is being felt by many other real estate companies, despite how they may try to ‘sugar coat’ it in recruiting efforts,” Todd wrote.

Calls and emails to Todd and other officials of the two Re/Max franchises were not returned. But in her letter she described as “tearful” the decisions to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sell to the neighboring Re/Max franchise.

“For me personally, this announcement comes with very mixed emotions including great sadness and disappointment. As you know, this was once my father’s baby, which he entrusted to me. Many tears and sleepless nights have been given to this decision, and my personal life has suffered,” she wrote. “However, I assure you that this difficult decision has been made with [the company’s] and your best interests in mind.”

She wrote with optimism of the sale of Marquee Partners to Re/Max Palos Verdes Execs, which is owned by Sandra Sanders and her son James. (Calls for comment from Sandra Sanders were not returned.)

“Once the decision [to close down Marquee Partners] was made, I spent hours upon days negotiating with lawyers, Re/Max International and other interested parties to determine the best way to preserve and protect our most valuable assets – namely you, our agents,” she wrote.

She “reached an agreement to sell the assets of [Marquee Partners] to the Re/Max Sanders Group,” she wrote. “…I hope you will see this as simply a move from one family business to another — from the Todd family to the Re/Max Sanders Group.

“I know that you will find them to be down to earth and good, fair business people. In that spirit, I am now passing my baby over to the Re/Max Sanders Group with complete faith and optimism for a brighter tomorrow for you, and for Re/Max. With the recent exchange of ideas between companies, I know that a stronger company will emerge.”

Todd also informed her agents of her plan to file for bankruptcy, which she did Feb. 16, according to court records. She wrote that she would continue to operate Marquee Partners for 60 to 90 days while the sale to the Palos Verdes-based franchise is reviewed by a bankruptcy judge.

She encouraged each agent to “continue your Re/Max affiliation with the new Re/Max Sanders Group.

“You are a Re/Max associate for a reason. Accordingly, I hope that you will not consider the many options that will undoubtedly present themselves to you until after you have explored an affiliation with the Re/Max Sanders Group.”

Expensive lawsuit

In addition to the downturn of the real estate market, Todd wrote that “another major contributing factor” in the decision to seek bankruptcy protection was a “lengthy and expensive trade name lawsuit” by All Cities Realty of Costa Mesa.

According to the lawsuit, the Costa Mesa firm held a federal trademark on the All Cities name, and Marquee Partners adopted the name as well from 2002 to 2007, which had the effect of redirecting internet traffic away from the Costa Mesa firm.

All Cities has also named numerous agents who worked for Re/Max at the time as defendants. In court documents, All Cities contends that Re/Max at one point “disclaimed responsibility” for its agents’ use of the All Cities name, then reversed itself on that point, but still failed to indemnify its agents from responsibility.

“Putting aside my personal feelings about the plaintiff, his counsel, and our belief about the meritless nature of the action, this has been a long, exhausting and costly drama,” Todd wrote to her agents.

Each side has blamed the other for delays in the trial, Todd complaining in the letter that a recent delay was caused “because one of the plaintiff’s witnesses allegedly became ill within days of trial.

“Suffice it to say, this litigation case has been dragging on for almost seven years, without any immediate end in sight, all at an enormous cost – both emotionally and in terms of the resulting legal expense to [Marquee Partners].”

High-end move

While the Sanders group of Re/Max prepares to spread northward, Sotheby’s plans a similar move, having leased space in downtown Manhattan Beach to expand from its existing Palos Verdes office.

Gerard Bisignano, a former Redondo Beach city councilman and a partner in Peninsula Sotheby’s International Realty, said the firm will bring its more traditional business approach to the new office in what he described as a counterpoint to the “rent-a-desk” model that Re/Max pioneered into mass use.

Re/Max, and later other companies, place varying amounts of emphasis on the rent-a-desk model, in which the brokerage firm leases working space to its real estate agents, who get to keep larger chunks of their commissions in return.

Sotheby’s Manhattan office will take a larger cut of its agents’ commissions, but Bisignano said the company will work hard to mentor a smaller but carefully selected number of agents, perhaps 25 to 40 of them per local office.

He said the Sotheby’s approach depends upon the agents’ success, because the firm makes money on agents’ commissions, not their rent.

“Our motto is if you don’t succeed, we don’t succeed,” he said in an interview on the rooftop deck – next to the rooftop swimming pool – of a distinctly modern Strand house he has listed for $13.5 million in Manhattan Beach.

Just the same, exponents of the rend-a-desk model that Re/Max popularized also said they rely on high-producing agents. A 29-year veteran of Re/Max said agents renting workspace must bet that they will be above average for the model to work in their favor.

Bisignano said the rent-a-desk model did poorly during the market downturn, because it requires large numbers of agents for the broker to grow, and while most agents don’t sell much during hard times, their broker continues to pay rent on large workspaces.

Kelli Todd noted in her letter to her agents wrote, “Our accounts receivables continue to rise as agents feel the downturn of the market…”

Companies like Sotheby’s aim to grow by recruiting and mentoring small numbers of agents who already have proven themselves, or who show ample potential, he said.

“My belief is the whole paradigm is shifting,” he said.

Bisignano said that the beach cities real estate market is “dominated” by locally-based outfits Shorewood Realtors and South Bay Brokers.

But he said it is rare for California coastal communities with expensive homes to be so heavily represented by locally-based firms, and he believes that Sotheby’s, with its “global reach” and international expertise, is well positioned to stake a larger claim in the beach cities.

In the downturned real estate market, potential buyers for expensive homes must be sought far outside the homeowner’s area, if need be, he said, pointing to the Russian buyer he found for a $7 million home on the Peninsula.

Foreign buyers of area homes are the exception, he said, but as high-end homes linger in the for-sale listings, the reach of an agent becomes more important. Bisignano said Sotheby’s listings are online with the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times of London. The company’s listings, Bisignano said, “are in nine languages and five currencies.”

He said newer beach cities residents have come from the areas such as L.A.’s western reaches, where they have become “comfortable with the international players” in real estate, diluting the “tribal” nature of locals who hew to local brokers.

Holding firm

Arnold Goldstein, co-owner of four-decade-old Shorewood Realtors, with more than 400 agents and seven offices in the beach cities, Torrance and Palos Verdes, greeted news of the expansions from the hill with a shrug.

Asked if his company would take any steps to react to the Sotheby’s incursion, he said, “We do more dollar value than anybody in the beach cities…They would have to react to us.”

Shorewood ranked fourth in Los Angeles County and 62nd in the nation in dollar-volume sales last year, Goldstein said.

He said residents’ preference for local brokers has been a constant feature of the beach cities, and franchise firms have not done much business here.

Goldstein declined to discuss Shorewood’s business model and how it might differ from the approaches of the other brokerages.

Standing strong

Jim Van Zanten, a partner in the 24-year-old South Bay Brokers, also spoke of the value of the local brokerage in reaction to the Sotheby’s move.

“We are locally owned, we know this market,” he said. “I’m not sure an office from Palos Verdes is going to have much impact here.”

He said Sotheby’s is expected to go after “the upper end market” just as South Bay Brokers does.

Like Re/Max, South Bay Brokers allows its agents to keep a larger portion of their commissions in exchange for paying some of the costs of operation, but Van Zanten said the rent-a-desk label is inaccurate and “kind of demeaning.”

The brokerage, with offices in Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach, provides its agents with services such as education, legal oversight and help with transactions, he said.

“We provide a lot more than desks,” Van Zanten said.

He said the South Bay Brokers model depends upon “high-producing agents.”

He said all South Bay Brokers’ 100 agents are fulltime agents, and said the downturn in the real estate market, which bottomed out locally in early 2009, culled part-time agents out of the business.

“We are seeing a consolidation back to agents who are fulltime professionals,” Van Zanten said.

He said as many as one third of the area’s agents left the business during the downturn, but will return as the market improves.

Van Zanten mentioned Bisignano’s former 16-year association with South Bay Brokers.

“I don’t know what Gerard is doing,” he said. “Gerard was with us up until a month ago.”

Bisignano said he left South Bay Brokers in mid-December, after telling the firm he had the opportunity to become a partner in Sotheby’s.

Staying steady

Steve Goddard, a broker manager and a seller for Re/Max in Manhattan Beach – and president of the California Association of Realtors – said the Sotheby’s and Re/Max moves would not mark sea changes in the local real estate industry, pointing out that area agents sell all over the area already.

“We’re all selling from El Segundo to the bottom of the peninsula, and some are selling out of the area also,” he said.

The soon-to-be-larger Re/Max franchise will certainly be able to claim larger sales after absorbing its neighboring franchise, for instance, but how much of a change in the industry would that actually represent?

Goddard said real estate sales are much more “localized” than an area-wide look at the companies would reveal. Agents become expert in selling individual neighborhoods, he said – so much so that he might call with a friendly ribbing if he breaks into a competitor’s established neighborhood with a listing.

“Real estate is very, very local. Your house is localized to its little area,” he said, and the homes in one small section could be three times more expensive than other homes just seven or eight blocks away.

In addition, he said, a small number of agents get the vast majority of the listings, and the rest do very little business, so the difference from agent to agent might be more important than the differences from broker to broker.

“There are about 4,000 people selling real estate from El Segundo to the bottom of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, and about 250 really sell a lot of property,” Goddard said.

“Sotheby’s won’t come in here and change everything,” he said. ER

by Robb Fulcher

When comic book writer Joshua Dysart got the green light to update the old DC character Unknown Soldier by placing him in Uganda’s civil war, he found himself wrestling with a subject that he could not adequately research, because very little had been written about the conflict. So he traveled to Uganda to see firsthand the horrors of war and to meet its soldiers – some of them children – and its victims.

The result was a blend of feature journalism and contemporaneous historical fiction in the form of a comic book series, which helped to fill a western informational gap on the war.

A Yale University professor said Dysart, 38, depicted the civil war “leaps and bounds better than virtually every journalist” had, and outdid many researchers as well. Dysart was asked to lecture on the conflict at the Universities of Ohio and Miami, and his work was covered on the BBC, NPR and CNBC Africa. The New York Times devoted an issue’s lead space in its arts and entertainment section to the comic book.

Meanwhile, Dysart’s ongoing run of “Unknown Soldier” manages to remain an entertaining comic book despite its haunting setting, with engrossing characters and a suspenseful, well-paced narrative that weaves a love story into its representation of war.

The LBC

Dysart will sign copies of “Unknown Soldier” while sometime collaborator Mike Wellman, manager of The Comic Bug store in Manhattan Beach, signs copies of “Kids of Widney High” Saturday, Feb. 20 at Comic Expo 2010 inside the Long Beach Convention Center. (For more see longbeachcomiccon.com.)

Wellman will also sign his “Gone South” southern fried girl-vampire comics, which he recently optioned for motion picture rights.

Long odds

Comic book publisher Vertigo, a brainy imprint of the powerhouse DC Comics, approached a number of writers, including Dysart, when the company decided to revamp the Unknown Soldier. The character dates back to the 1960s, when he appeared as a World War II soldier with a face covered by bandages.

Dysart, a WWII history buff, thought about pitching a storyline with the bandaged hero in his traditional setting, but using greater realism than was found in the comics of the ‘60s. But in the end he settled on Uganda as a setting, although he knew that the war there was a tiny blip on the mainstream American radar screen. He pitched a multi-comic tale about a Uganda-born physician who returns to the country to be helpful, and is hurled into a world of insane violence, crushing oppression and impossible choices.

He figured the other writers’ pitches would focus on the Iraq war, or the war on terror, and the job would go to one of them.

“I did not expect them to green light a story about a war nobody had heard of, with characters that were exclusively African, and a main character who is forced to kill children,” Dysart said. “But it’s good to take a long shot sometimes.”

To his surprise, Vertigo said yes.

“Then I started to really think about it, ‘Oh, here comes another white guy to tell a B.S. story about Africa,’” Dysart said. “The responsibility really floored me all of a sudden. I regretted the pitch at first.”

Then he started his research in earnest, and found so little had been written about the conflict that he would have to go to Uganda and research the conflict firsthand.

“It was the only one way to do this right,” he said. “I had no other choice as a responsible storyteller.”

Horrors of war

It was 2007 and a ceasefire was in effect. Relative peace reigned in some areas for the first time in two decades.

Dysart went to one of the largest AIDs hospice/clinics in Africa, Mulago Hospital in Kampala. He went to a medical clinic camp where many wounded children were treated.

“People were still coming in after stepping on landmines,” he said.

He met with children who were fighting in the Lord’s Resistance Army, and soldiers who fought on the other side. He talked to child soldiers who had escaped their army and were struggling to return to a nonviolent way of life.

“The kids imparted all kinds of different stuff,” Dysart said. “They were having trouble finding an economic place – reintegrating into a peaceful society is a fundamental issue with child soldiers in general – and they were dealing with the trauma of reintegration. That’s the real struggle.

“I’ve always felt the ending of wars is much more difficult than the beginning of them. The entire younger generation of the Acholi [ethnic group in northern Uganda] was affected by the war.”

Dysart found “shockingly easy access” to the war’s intimate results, its seas of displaced people, a camp for war-affected children, a clinic where people experienced “the greatest suffering of their lives.”

“All doors flew open. I would meet somebody and 10 minutes later I would be eating dinner with them. It was part of a therapeutic process. They wanted to share this with somebody, wanted to be part of the larger world,” he said.

“Most white people they saw were nonprofit workers, food truck drivers, doctors – if you say you’re basically a tourist it just blows their minds,” he said.

Dysart returned with an education in the war and a deep feeling for the people swept up in it, and he began writing his “Unknown Soldier” run.

He hoped to create a “genuine education tool” that would also entertain, and he pulled that off, with the help of rich, warm illustrations by Alberto Ponticelli.

Wide acclaim

“Unknown Soldier” hit the stands, and reached far beyond the confines of the comic book stores and the geek media. The morning after the Times story was published, Dysart awakened to a flood of attention.
“There were 900 new e-mails in my folder,” he said.

He heard from a Danish consulate, people from the United Nations, media outlets and nonprofit entities including UNICEF.

“I couldn’t begin to address them all,” he said. “That morning I was invited to the book fair in Miami.”

Despite the attention from the media and academia, the comic book hardcore has given “Unkown Soldier” little support.

“It’s the second lowest selling book by Vertigo right now,” Dysart said.

He believes that the positive criticism outside the comic book press is the only thing that has prevented Vertigo from canceling his “Unknown Soldier” run.

Dysart first made waves in the comic book world when he co-created and wrote the “Violent Messiahs” series in the late ‘90s. Since then his has written for heavyweight titles including “Swamp Thing,” “Conan” and “Hellboy,” which was created by comic book superstar Mike Mignola of Manhattan Beach.

Dysart is scheduled to work on a graphic novel adaptation of the 2003 Neil Young album “Greendale,” sometimes described as a “rock novel” that follows the lives of a small town American family.

Kids are alright

Wellman took a liking to the subjects of his “Kids of Widney High,” a singing group composed of mentally and physically disabled students from a special education high school in L.A., after he saw them perform.

He put on his editor and publisher’s cap, and oversaw a project in which the kids wrote their own eponymous 36-page comic, which was then illustrated by notable artists from the South Bay and beyond.

“This wasn’t some occasion where a celebrity rock band casually said, ‘Oh, we’d like you to make a comic book,’” Wellman said shortly after the book’s release. “The Kids of Widney High were hands-on from the very beginning, telling the stories they wanted to tell.”

Every word of dialogue in the book was taken from extensive interview sessions with the eight members of the group and then compiled into “a story of adventure and triumph,” Wellman said.

Comic book artists on the project included Robbi (“Maintenance”) Rodriguez, Rafael (“Sonambulo”) Navarro, Rikki (“The Monacle and Jimmy Specs”) Niehaus, Chuck (“Black Metal”) B.B., Chris (“Bainst”) Brandt and Neal (“Negative Burn”) Von Flue.

Von Flue and his wife Dawn Von Flue are creators of a 40-foot mural showcasing Hermosa history on the western wall of Cantina Real restaurant on the Pier Plaza. The Von Flues also created an art-deco tile mermaid at the Neptunian Woman’s Club of Manhattan Beach. ER

by Robb Fulcher

The city has agreed to pay $175,000 to a Los Angeles Police Department sergeant who claimed he was battered and falsely arrested after he called Hermosa police “the Gestapo” outside a private party in 2003. The sergeant, Mark Pompano, then 39, was off duty at the time.

According to a lawsuit filed by Pompano, Hermosa police helped a busy Manhattan Beach Police Department by responding to a loud party complaint on Eighth Street in the neighboring town.

Pompano was leaning against a police car, watching from across the street, and said to a friend, “Look at the Gestapo over there,” referring to Hermosa officers, according to the lawsuit. Gestapo were German security police organized under the Nazi regime.

The police officers ran across the street and told the two men to stop, then one of the officers “applied a violent ‘shoulder smash’” to Pompano, who was placed in handcuffs, the lawsuit contended.

Pompano was arrested on suspicion of public intoxication, taken to the Hermosa police station, given a test to show whether his eyes responded normally to motion, then told to leave, the lawsuit contended.

In the settlement, the city also agreed to pay for mediation that was held before an Orange County Superior Court judge, and to pay Pompano’s travel expenses from Connecticut. ER

Eric Wilcosky of the city’s Public Works Department consults with Superintendent Mike Flaherty from atop the crawler loader Wilcosky uses to remove giant sand clogs from the town’s big storm drain pipes. Photo by Robb Fulcher

by Robb Fulcher

As a series of storms pounded the South Bay, city workers once again concentrated their attention on keeping open the large outfall pipes that carry rivers of rainwater from the roads to the beach.

“There’s a lot of rain, but we’re keeping up with it,” said Public Works Superintendent Mike Flaherty as he crisscrossed the town in his white municipal pickup truck Monday afternoon, monitoring the outfall work and surveying low-lying parts of town, where heavy rains often cause some flooding in residents’ homes.

“Beach Drive isn’t flooding,” Flaherty noted with pleasure as he rolled passed the narrow, low-lying road that runs parallel to The Strand.

Flaherty said some flooding would likely occur during the week of rain, but as of 1:30 p.m. Monday none had been reported.

Over the previous four days, Hermosans had trouped to City Hall to pick up 20 cubic yards of sand and about 3,000 sandbags to dam the coming waters. In addition Flaherty and his crews stood ready with 300 to 400 pre-filled sandbags to respond to residential flooding.

But, he said, the key to overall Hermosa storm-flood protection is to keep open the big drainpipes that carry the water to the beach.

At high tide, about once every 12 hours, the surf and the rainwater can combine to push sand into the mouth of the pipes, clogging them and backing the rainwater up into town. So about high tide time, Eric Wilcosky of Flaherty’s department pilots a big John Deere crawler loader down the beach to unclog the drains.

As Flaherty drove his truck along the sand, inspecting all 11 outfalls, he stopped at an especially big one off 16th Street where about a third of the city’s storm water roars from the pipe’s rectangular mouth, which measures about six feet by four feet.

“This is like a river,” Flaherty said.

He described Wilcosky’s method for unclogging the 16th Street pipe:
“He gets in front of it, opens it up, and gets the heck out of the way.”

As pounding rain was joined by pounding surf, the city pier was closed Tuesday afternoon amid high waves. ER