Chicken Corner is flying the coup for the next couple of weeks. On vacation! Cluck. Back soon.

There seems to be a phantom film crew roaming Echo Park this week. Not just an unpermitted band of filmers, but a mysterious presence. Let me begin on Tuesday early a.m. I was driving home after midnight. I am "on call" to write subtitles, and I had worked late into the evening. I drove across the city and then into Echo Park, which was deep asleep. I saw almost no cars. Lights were out in the houses. The streetlamps looked like wasted light. No swells leaving the bars on Sunset. I continued up Echo Park Avenue through the dark and quiet.

At home, I was just winding down when I heard gunshots. Seven of them, quite close. Unfortunately, I have enough experience listening to gun shots to know a) what they sound like and b) when they're close. I waited a moment, then I called 911. I got through right away, and I told the dispatcher about the gunfire. I told him where I was, and where I believed the shots had been. He told me there was a film being shot nearby. (Only in L.A., as one of my neighbors pointed out.) Ordinarily, this would have been exactly what I wanted to hear, but I hadn't seen any sign of a film crew, and I didn't hear any other kind of noise. I asked him if he was sure, because it seemed unlikely. I can't remember what he said exactly. We decided to end our conversation. About fifteen or twenty minutes later, a helicopter came by, did a couple of turns at a high altitude and then went away. This much I know.

This lovely offering was posted on Craig's list:

Wanted: Any Youngster Stealing bike parts. (Echo Park, Downtown.)

Reply to: sale-jrejw-1090709494@craigslist.org Date: 2009-03-24, 7:13PM PDT

Thats right. Any mothafucka caught stealing bikes or bike parts is going to lose all his teeth...ON SITE. You think this is a fucken game? Dont Trip, We are going to start playing, All your kick it spots are burned. I know all of them. I know all your faces, and soon all you will get jacked for your bikes same way. Keep it up fucken pieces of shit NDO's. Youll see me soon.

Location: Echo Park, Downtown. it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests PostingID: 1090709494

For the last year Chicken Corner has been hearing about bike thefts rising, rising. I wondered of course if it had anything to do with the rising price of gas. Or the rising cost of everything, in relative terms.

The seven-foot stuffed monkey. Manny the Monkey to be precise. For probably a year he spent his days and nights clowning or frowning, depending on his posture, on some lawn furniture in front of a small Baxter Street bungalow court. He was a charmer who brought a sense of fun and mystery, and my daughter loved Manny, who was one of the landmark events of all our walks in that direction. But Manny is gone. Word on the street: Manny was stolen. Now the teak-looking lawn furniture sits empty -- it's just furniture now, no longer a stage set. It's a testament to the meanness of thieves.

Among the emails Chicken Corner has received this week are messages concerning a dwarf rabbit's death and the right to ride.

J Michael Walker, artist and writer of All the Saints of the City of the Angels, lost a good rabbit to the dread tobacco tree:

Walker wrote:

Dear Jenny, Amy is absolutely right. We had a pet dwarf rabbit several years ago. It lived in our house and, when it weasn't gnawing on the odd bit of furniture, was totally endearing and adorable (A word I rarely use). It was tame enough, and sure enough of its home, that I could let it loose in our front and back yards.

But there were two things I was then unaware of: First, tobacco plants are totally poisonous; second, rabbits will eat anything they do not retain, apparently, from generations past, the knowledge that other animals do, of what to, and what not to, eat. So Bunny delightedly ate of this and that in our backyard, and the small tobacco plant, that had self-seeded between cracks in our brick patio, proved her undoing.

I found a very very unpleasant path in the grass, that stretched from the plant to her stiff corpse, legs outstretched fore and aft. Not only had she died, but it was clearly not a painless one. Please underscore the danger to household pets.

In all seriousness, Walker's note has led to my decision not to get a rabbit because my yard is a hopelessly abundant garden of poisonous delights. I do not have tobacco trees, but I do have panamanian nightshade, lillies all over the place, belladonna, and who knows what deadly else. A horror show. And rabbits need to go outside.

People need to get out, too, which brings us to: mountain biking. A reader -- and mountain bike activist -- named William Campbell sent me the following defense of biking a couple of days ago:

Speaking of the silvery yellow-flowered so-called tobacco tree: I have always had a funny feeling about that plant. Not the one that grows dark green leaves that are cured and smoked to disastrous effect. The one I'm thinking of grows around here wherever it gets a chance: all over Elysian Park, in my back yard, in my front yard (for a short while). I see them growing, and I think weed and other unflattering things; I pull it up.

My instinct got its affirmation recently in an email from a reader, Amy Wakeland.

Amy wrote:

I thought I would pop you a note to correct what I think might be some unintended misinformation in one of your recent posts. You write: "It's only a tobacco-tree plant (Nicotiana glauca), of course. Not to be confused with actual tobacco plant whose leaves can be harvested and turned into sickness and early death. No, this one (see photo) is harmless in every way except for, perhaps, as a pest."

Tree tobacco is actually highly toxic, and, if consumed, can lead to a slowing of the pulse, stumbling, dizziness, nausea, vomiting and even death (by respiratory failure). Children especially should be kept away from the plants; pets should be shooed away from them if they are nibbling on them; and people should use gloves when removing tree tobacco plants from their yards.

How unpleasant. Yes, that plant makes me uneasy. Thank you, Amy!

Photo: Kim Pesenti, March 3, 2009

Large ideas filled a small space a few nights ago, as Edgar Cahn addressed Echo Park Time Bankers at the Echo Park Film Center. Cahn is the "inventor" of time banks, concept-wise (though if he wants to build one, all he has to do is step next door to Machine Project and they'll set him and any other volunteers up with as much discarded electronics gear as they can handle). Cahn is the other kind of DC lawyer; he's an activist who has worked on progressive causes and projects for years, with Sargent Shriver, among others. He's also founder of the law school at Antioch University. On Tuesday, he gave the time to come to Echo Park, speaking for about 45 minutes with members of the fairly new time bank in this community. In his remarks, he made clear that he sees the practical act of time-banking (a flat-rate barter system in which one hour's labor is repaid with one hour, regardless of the service -- which can be anything from dog walking, computer repair, language instruction, rides to the airport and hair cuts to political action and simple acts of companionship, civic engagement, caring, certain kinds of spiritual labor) as a social movement -- a program in community repair, in "rebuilding the social infrastructure of connectedness." In the economic world of Time Banking, he said, "there are no throwaway people."

Not everyone loves the goats. Yesterday Chicken Corner received the following unsigned communication:

Goats ain't so green after all. Rumor has it they damaged if not killed a bunch of trees by stripping off their bark when used in downtown by the CRA.

There is also a lot of concern about goats being vectors for weeds as they move from site to site with weed seed in their gut and on their fur. Goats don't spew exhaust like mowers do, but weeds are pollution too.

Anonymous included a document for information on invasive plants: http://www.cal-ipc.org/resources/pdf/BioPollution.pdf.

Yes, sometimes goats hurt trees, though Chicken Corner has not heard talk on the street of goats hurting trees during a CRA mission. But weeds as pollution? Chicken Corner begs to differ. I am partial to Echo Park landscape professional Michael O'Brien's definition of a weed: A weed is a plant that is growing where you don't want it to. A weed is a value judgment. And, yes, many of them are hideous; they live to disrupt our sense of order and beauty and unbalance the environment by killing sensitive native flora. Still, Chicken Corner would like to stand up for the purity of the word pollution. Let's not ruin a perfectly good word by mixing up concepts like gone-wild euphorbia and cottonweed plants with PCBs, oil spills, and pig shit methane river dumps. Over-defining/over-stretching a (politically!) useful word can be a form of pollution, too.

Photo/Farmlab

It's not true that no one has a job anymore. These goats do! At least until tomorrow. Farmlab posted images of working goats -- or goats guest-working -- at its Anabolic Monument* downtown on Monday. Tuesday will be their last day at the site.

And what a pretty group of guest workers they are. In a brief interview with the busy goats, Chicken Corner found them inquisitive as goats tend to be, friendly to the point of rudeness, willing to talk -- though their comments don't readily translate. The sound of chewing: pstchah, pstchah, pstchah etc. They wanted to know why people are always so charmed and delighted by livestock in urban areas. I shrugged. "Isn't it obvious? They long for nature. They think animals are funny." "Pstchah, pstchah." Their work ethic: impeccable.

One thing I know, we could use their services on undergrowth in 85 percent of Elysian Park.

*Anabolic Monument? Think crop circles, decaying corn stalks, no pesticide, trains nearby, macromolecular synthesis, and...goats. For a more precise explanation, contact anyone other than Chicken Corner -- and please forward!

Chicken Corner is all for bicycles replacing cars on the street -- and all against bikes replacing bipedals and their dogs on hiking/walking trails in Elysian Park, not to mention bike treads flattening fauna and doing all the kinds of damage that are associated with off-trail freewheeling receration in semi-wild areas. Like the west side of Elysian Park! The issue has arisen before, and efforts to rewrite the regulations of the park -- to allow mountain biking -- have been defeated by the community and other people who already use the western side of Elysian. As far as I know, the cruisers and drug dealers, who are some of the busiest users of the park's east end, have not organized to stall off bike use.

A few years ago, the neighborhood was in an uproar -- literally, I had friends roaring in the street! -- about poorly publicized, almost secret meetings Jackie Goldberg's office was holding to discuss reopening the park to mountain bikes. That de-regulation effort was battered out of the park, after community activists got wind.

Back then, in 2000, George Ramos wrote in the LA Times:

Soil erosion and the safety of park users are the opponents' main concerns.

"Legs and wheels don't mix," said Sallie Neubauer, president of the Citizens Committee to Save Elysian Park. "Mountain bikers seek the thrill of the dangerous and the extreme. And we're talking about urban park space where people go walking with their dogs and baby carriages. If you allow mountain bikes in the city, you'll push out other park users."

The Times could rerun virtually every word of Ramos's article today, and none of it would be stale.

Because the two wheel beast appears to be back.

Recently I heard from a friend who sent me documents showing that the city is "working with" a biking industry consultant, The Osprey Group, to look into opening Elysian and other parks to mountain bikers.

Oliver mentioned "the fact that the city is broke and is spending tax dollars on non-objective consultants for "Trail Biking"... There is no doubt that the Osprey Group is on the side of the industry (they are being paid REI and Patagonia to push this agenda) and not a true policy consultant. This is a critical point and is proven ... on their website."

As before, it comes down to people who use the park now with their feet vs. people who say they can't use it without wheels.