A name you can trust!
November 2, 2016 § 18 Comments
I want to take a minute to introduce you to a real estate professional named Frank Ponce. Mr. Ponce has recently been active in protecting his city from ugly, useless, poorly planned bicycle signage in his community.
Mr. Ponce operates in Palos Verdes Estates and is one of the great real estate professionals of our time, a man who can help you achieve your dreams. One of the recommendations on his web site is the purchase of this amazing book:
Matthew A. Martinez has come out with yet another incredible book with no gimmicks on how to make money in real estate in the new economy. Matthew is truly
the Warren Buffett of real estate investing. I urge you purchase this book if your are a real estate professional or an investor.Those get rich quick schemes like flipping houses is for the birds. There is no speculation here. These are sure ways to building your real estate empire within this book. Click on the image to find out more.
In addition to recommending this incredible book with no gimmicks, and his unconventional grammatical use of “your are,” Mr. Ponce also dabbles in subject-verb disagreement, another cutting edge writing technique that is sure to get your attention and keep you focused on the excellent services he provides. (Disclaimer: I have bought a copy of this book and it is really incredible, with no gimmicks. I expect that, with the amazing tips from this book, I will soon be able to buy the apartment building in which I currently live. Thank you, Mr. Ponce!!!)
“But who is Frank Ponce?” you may be asking. I know I did. It turns out that he is one of those true success stories in PVE who hales from just north of Dodger Stadium, a guy who started with nothing and pulled himself up by his own bootstraps to be the realtor he is today. As Mr. Ponce tells it in the “About Me” section of his web site:
I got my first taste of income properties when I was still in Junior High School working for my father and helping him manage his motels.
There’s nothing tougher than working for your dad and helping him manage his motels, plural. The hours are long and the boss is really tough on you because you have to make your bed and keep your room clean. Plus, you start at the bottom and remain there for weeks. From these humble beginnings, Mr. Ponce developed a truly humanitarian approach to life and success, an appreciation of couches, and an approach that has served him well. In Mr. Ponce’s own inimitable words:
Landlording is perhaps the single most important service anyone can provide because you are providing a roof over a family’s head. Landlording is probably the world’s second oldest profession and certainly the most lucrative. Properly managed, a good piece of income property is the closest thing you will ever come to a real live, self-propelled, self-generating money machine.
Well, who doesn’t like a self-generating money machine? Probably the same stupid people who don’t like made-up words like “landlording.” And any salesman who can juxtapose his profession with prostitution and do it with a smile, well, that’s the guy you want to entrust with the sale of your attractive, one-of-a-kind bridge in Brooklyn. Trust me.
However, Mr. Frank Ponce isn’t just a practitioner of the oldest profession after the oldest profession and the owner of a real, live, money machine. He’s also a community guy who cares about the little people he owns. Listen to Mr. Frank Ponce:
But, I am not just a landlord. I get involved in the city that I buy in. I am a member in the Chamber of Commerce, and help create Landlord clubs to help eliminate crime in certain neighborhoods. In being a landlord one needs to remember that you are the owner of a small community, and you have the power to make that little community a better place for people to live in.
It is pretty awesome that Mr. Frank Ponce never forgets, even for a moment, that he is the owner of a small community, and that making communities safer is job number one. Of course sometimes when you are landlording you have to sell the little community you own and care for, but life can sometimes be harsh. Mr. Ponce has some good advice for how to go about dealing with the little people who you own. e.g “tenants.”
Doing a thorough inspection of the exterior and interior of the property will afford you the opportunity to potentially find anything in disrepair and fix it. Of course, you don’t want to alarm or alert tenants to the fact that you will be selling the property. Just tell them that you are doing an annual inspection and give them 24 hours notice.
It may seem cruel to lie to the little people community that you own and to leave off apostrophes, but sometimes this is necessary. In addition to helping people as a landlorder, Mr. Ponce has been very active defending the Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch. Some members of this group of upstanding citizens have been sued for criminal gang activity that involves allegations of decades-long harassment and violence against non-resident surfers at Lunada Bay.
Mr. Ponce wants you to know that Palos Verdes Estates is a family friendly place, and that these allegations are ridiculous. Mr. Ponce, in a wide-ranging, intelligent, and reflective interview about the allegations of gang activity directed against outsiders, notes that as a local resident “I have NEVER had any problems with any of the surfers there.” Of course there are two sides to every story, even if the other one is completely wrong, like this one.
Mr. Ponce is similarly dismissive of the oldest profession, which it turns out includes the media. He vigorously defends the family-friendly nature of Lunada Bay in this interview with LA Weekly:
“I’m really disgusted with the media,” says Frank Ponce, who’s lived in Lunada Bay since 1998. “They’re a bunch of prostitutes. There are no gangs down there, I can tell you that right now. You get a couple idiots who cause trouble. But for the most part, everyone there, they’re older people, they just have fun and surf.”
Of course the fun-loving may include a bit of rock throwing, a touch of vehicle vandalism, a few punch ’em ups, the occasional rape threat, and the privatization of public land. However, as a valued customer you should understand that this will not happen if, like Mr. Ponce, you are a local resident of PVE. In fact, once you purchase your home you will get to know and love these fun-filled defendants. According to Mr. Ponce, “They loan me their kayaks. They are really nice people. They are business owners.”
As a real estate professional, Mr. Ponce appreciates the illegal surfer patio built by the Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch, usurping public land for private, unpermitted use. “I go down there with my kids,” Ponce said. “I use that shack to barbecue.” Although it’s unclear whether little apartment people in the communities he owns can also use the patio, as a landlorder in PVE you probably can.
As Mr. Ponce, along with Garrett Unno, Zoe Unno, Cynthia Bianchi, and Shannon Zaragoza stand up against the real gangsters in Palos Verdes Estates–the bicycling gangsters–I hope you support him with your patronage by buying a home from him. If your children enjoy riding bicycles, Mr. Ponce can explain to them that PVE is really not a very good place for that.
They can, however, take up surfing.
END
————————
I’ve set up a store on Shopify where you can buy South Bay Cycling items, the purchase of which will help pay for food/drinks/snacks at the Nov. 8 PVE City Council Bike Ride and Pizza Party, as well as for advocacy to fight the evil of people like the Unnos, Cynthia Bianchi, Shannon Zaragoza, Frank Ponce, and the Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch who zealously oppose bicycle signage.
And for $2.99 per month you can subscribe to this blog and support people who support cycling, on and off the bike. Click here and select the “subscribe” link in the upper right-hand corner. Thank you!
Smile, it’s free
September 16, 2016 § 34 Comments
Ever since the combat with the cities of Rancho Palos Verdes and Palos Verdes Estates began over the installation of a few signs (more NIMBY agitation over this than over the federal class action lawsuit alleging gang behavior and city complicity, yo), I’ve been testing the theory that local residents dislike cyclists.
What I’ve found is that for they most part, they do not. At worst the don’t care. At best they actually like us. The Lunada Bay Boy on Mom’s Couch and his NIMBY vidiot-recorder who are making such hay with their hatred of cyclists are a tiny slice of nastiness and venom in otherwise pretty nice bunch of folks.
I’ve reached this conclusion by running the following scientific test throughout PV when I cycle.
- Approach walker, jogger, leaf blower, gardener, trash truck operator, woman pushing stroller, dad getting into his car on the way to work, etc.
- Smile.
- Wave when it’s safe to do so.
- Say “Good morning!”
- Alternatively, say “Hello!”
In virtually every instance people smile back, return the greeting, and/or wave.
There are always one or two people over the span of several days who are so deeply sunken in their reverie of how they’re going to evict their son from their couch, or who are so sour that nothing can penetrate their misery, that they pointedly stare at the ground or grumpily refuse to make eye contact.
But you know what? They are a tiny minority. Pretty much everyone else doesn’t object in the least to the fact that you’re on a bicycle.
Not only that, but the occasional grumpster, like the lady yesterday who said “Good morning!” back to us and followed up with “I can hear you in my bedroom talking at 6:00 AM!” are amenable to conversation. One of our riders stopped and spoke with her and explained that whoever she was hearing, it wasn’t us because we don’t ride at that time on that road.
The lady then … gasp … apologized.
This is the great evil of a few diehard haters and the cesspool of angry comments that makes up places like NextDoor, where you can post anonymously with no fear that you’ll ever have to reveal your name and explain your bizarre notions to real people. The evil is that the perception — “Residents hate cyclists!” — creates reality.
Fortunately, with the simple act of a few free smiles and liberal use of the greetings you learned in kindergarten, the myth can be shown for what it is, that is, much sound and fury, signifying either nothing or a very uncomfortable couch.
END
————————
For $2.99 per month you can subscribe to this blog and better yet you can smile and wave, which is even cheaper. Click here and select the “subscribe” link in the upper right-hand corner. Thank you!
We are concerned about cyclist safety
September 1, 2016 § 24 Comments
This was the claim of the entitled NIMBYs in Rancho Palos Verdes last month who advocated banning cyclists from public roads. They are a splinter, ALT-Trump group of ultra-socialists, i.e. people who believe the means of production should be subjugated to the wants of the lazy class, and they have their counterpart further down the hill in the Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch.
They are concerned about cyclist safety, they say, as they focus on regulating every behavior but their own to achieve their life’s motoring goal, which is to have as much empty pavement in front of them as possible, paid for with other people’s tax money. They are the people who scream incessantly about cyclists who run stop signs but who don’t even know that the 3-foot passing law exists.
My response when they insincerely claim to be concerned about safety? No, you aren’t.
You don’t give a rat’s ass about cyclists, cyclist safety, or anything other than squelching the cognitive dissonance you feel at seeing strangers pedaling happiness machines on “your” roads because inside you are a miserable, envious, unfit, unhappy sack of tax dodges.
You don’t care if people get hit, killed, injured, maimed, terrorized, or traumatized, and you don’t care if the collateral wreckage includes kids who grow up without parents, spouses who spend years or decades caring for the shattered mind and body of a loved one, or individuals who get, in an instant, reduced from active, healthy, productive lives into badly broken, dependent shells.
Fortunately, in a couple of weeks you will have the opportunity to prove me wrong. The same stamping, champing, foaming, finger-pointing lardasses and potbellies who railed against Big Orange at the last Rancho Palos Verdes City Council meeting will have their second of six chances to actually do something about cyclist safety thanks, of course, to Big Orange, the group they so hate for insisting on doing something for cyclist safety that actually includes cyclist input.
On October 8, a Saturday that conflicts with football, pre-football, post-football, and, worst of all for the Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch, a 2:30 PM start time, which gives them only twelve minutes to put on sandals, roll off the couch, eat some dry Cheerios, and drive to the El Segundo Public Library, a place filled with books, (after filling up with mom’s gas card), yes, on October 8 Big Orange will sponsor its second Cycling Savvy course, taught by none other than Gary Cziko, Dude Who Used To Ride The NPR With A Giant Sign On The Back Of His Bike Saying “Bikes May Use Full Lane.”
That dude.
The Cycling Savvy course teaches bikers how to safely ride their bikes in traffic. But it does something else. It teaches cyclists, who also happen to be cagers most of the time, how to safely drive their 4,000-pound inflammable steel cages in the vicinity of underwear-clad people pedaling happiness machines.
In other words, every worthless Lunada Bay Boy on Mom’s Couch, and every dishrag-for-a-brain, bike hating NIMBY atop Crest has the opportunity to come and see what real cyclist safety measures look like. What they’ll find is that bike riders are ordinary people who just want to keep pedaling their happiness machines, and what they’ll also get is a sense for is how easy it is to accommodate the underwear-clad class without even being late to check out the shitty surf at the bluffs and key someone’s car who hasn’t yet heard that Lunada Bay doesn’t like you.
Oh, and it’s free, just be sure to get there at 2:00 PM (course begins at 2:30) because seating is limited and the venue will fill on a first-come, first-served basis. Courtesy of Big Orange.
END
————————
For $2.99 per month you can subscribe to this blog and get occasional videos documenting the amazing antics of the broke and unemployable Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch. Click here and select the “subscribe” link in the upper right-hand corner. Thank you!
Old guys drool
August 12, 2016 § 38 Comments
If you’re one of the 300,000 people who saw this video clip, you can go back to bed now reassured that the Internet did its job.
A few hours after we posted here about the greedy, violent, hostility of Lunada Bay surfers towards outsiders and cyclists, this saggy fellow from Corona del Mar showed that bullies and road ragers in Newport Beach got game, too.
And then Mr. Sagbottom discovered that videos on smart phones can quickly be uploaded to the Internet, which then results in this pathetic, babbling, self-debasing blibber-blabber which seems less an apology than a psychotic CYA self-flagellation tailored to a potential jury pool.
Yes, the Internet did its job, which, lest we ever, ever forget, is to entertain. We got the innocent victim, a cyclist out riding with his son. We got the caricature of a caricature of a caricature of a buffoon — angry, stupid, obese, dentally challenged, thinning hair, waddling, homophobic, and parroting a line from a cowboy movie, so ironic because he’s the opposite of the tough guys in the movie he obviously idolizes. Oh, and he was the perfect cardboard cutout for all that is bad about surfing and surfers, a fellow who is obviously too large and unfit to surf well, if at all, nonetheless pretending to speak for the surfing community.
If nothing else, it gave me pause to think how one asshole claiming to be a surfer can tarnish a whole bunch of people, not unlike the rude cyclist giving the finger to a housewife with a car full of little kids.
Robert Lewis gave every aggrieved cyclist the chance to happily and viciously punch the “like” button on Facebag, and to add a searing comment, piling onto a stinking heap of shit that smokes and smells just fine on its own. And then to watch the Newport Beach Police Department go from “We don’t care about this,” to “We’re taking this seriously and investigating” added a finale that was as unexpected as it was appreciated.
Justice may or may not be done, but Sir Sagbottom will spend a few more sleepless nights wishing he hadn’t made such an ass out of himself.
Entertainment is fun and the Internet delivers it. For that, I’m appreciative.
But for anyone who lives or cycles or cages in the South Bay, there’s a big load of work ahead, because the city of Rancho Palos Verdes has begun work on its bike safety master plan, and it is seeking clubs and cyclists who might be interested in collaborating.
I was gratified beyond words when Chris Rovin, Marvin Campbell, Tom Duong, John Wike, Greg Leibert, Chris Tregillis, Jose Godinez, Craig Eggers, Tara Unverzagt, Delia Park, Geoff Loui, Bob Frank, Mark Maxson, and Jaycee Cary responded within minutes when we reached out for potential volunteers.
They did so without knowing the commitment or even what was involved. What they knew was that it won’t be Internet entertainment. A group of RPV residents has already belittled cyclists as the residents attempt to illegally ban bikes from a public road; one fine fellow compared cyclists to dog shit. What these cyclists know is that it will be hard, it will take time, their asses may go numb from hours of sitting (free chamois cream and Junk Jam for all) and it will stretch their abilities to compromise and find common ground. It will also likely require them to spend actual face time with a bully or two like Mr. Sagbottom.
Thanks for stepping up. It’s not YouTube entertainment with a happy ending in less than 24 hours but it’s going to make cycling a lot more fun for others.
END
————————
Subscribe to this blog now! Special offer ends never! For $2.99 per month you can support real advocacy that really works. Click here and select the “subscribe” link in the upper right-hand corner. Thank you!
The bravest among us
August 9, 2016 § 34 Comments
The worst thing that can happen to you isn’t being tortured and killed. It’s having that happen to the people you love.
You’d think that no matter how testy things got between the Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch and cyclists on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, there would be a line in the sand that even spoiled, failed, class action defendants wouldn’t cross.
You’d be wrong.
The latest spitball in the classroom melee over the world-shaking, hard to answer question of whether or not it’s okay to kill cyclists with your car was flung by the anonymous goon who maintains a hatesite dedicated to attacking everyone and everything that challenges the white supremacy of the PV Peninsula.
And of course, being a bully and a coward (but I repeat myself), he attacked a child.
Let me back up.
The Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch really is a thing. In a recent Daily Breeze article in which the LBBOMC were sporting afro wigs and blackface on MLK Day, one of the alleged perpetrators was defended by … his mom:
According to the lawsuit, a local surfer named Anthony Beukema wore blackface and an Afro wig to the protest, telling organizer Chris Taloa, “You don’t pay enough taxes to be here.” Beukema could not be reached, but his mother vehemently denied the allegations to a reporter.
In addition to defending the public coastline that they’ve stolen from the people of California, which is right in line with what their soul-brethren in Rancho Palos Verdes Estates are seeking to do with Crest Rd., i.e. convert public roadway to private property so that bikers can’t ride there, the Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch have taken up the anti-bike cause on the peninsula as well.
One local realtor has gone on social media sites such as NextDoor and proclaimed that if cyclists get killed when disobeying traffic laws, it’s simply Darwinism at work. It makes you wonder what this must mean for his real estate pitches (“You’ll love this house. Great view, nice pool, friendly neighbors unless your kid’s on a bike then they will kill you.”) A small cadre in PVE have even brought into the cycling discussion such ideas as the Hajnal Line, and have pointedly suggested that that the reason PVE is so nice is because it is so white.
By now you’re probably wondering, “All this over a couple of bike signs?”
Answer: Yes. Oh, yes.
Anyway, at the last two PVE City Council meetings, one of the pro-bike speakers spoke, followed by his 12-year-old daughter. A few short weeks later the kid had become a target, with offensive and false comments posted about her on social media, comments so awful that the NextDoor admin took them down and even (Gasp!) admonished the poster.
So we’ve descended into 21st Century Online Hell, where grown men defendants sleeping on mom’s couch and their enablers are actually targeting children who dare to approach the lectern at a public meeting. And as repugnant as that sounds, well, maybe it’s not.
The first lesson in civics reminds me of this Japanese proverb: The nail that sticks up will get pounded down.
There are no risk-free public lecterns, whether you’re a kid advocating for safe streets or the parents of a soldier killed in the line of combat. Democracy and the defense of free speech mean that in order for good people who stand for justice to be heard, we must also hear the voices of Westboro Baptist Church.
It’s painful on a personal level when a surf gang member of the Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch attacks your kid (but less painful, perhaps, when you consider MMX’s question, “Have you seen them surf?”), but as a parent and a citizen you’ve already won. Your kid has stood up to the bullies, just like this kid did, and when the Palos Verdes City Council had to take a vote on making the streets safer, they voted to make the streets safer.
Take note of that, Boys on Mom’s Couch: The city council sided with an articulate 12-year-old and rejected the rantings of droopy, failed, defendant old men who are guilty of the worst crime you could ever commit in California, i.e. crappy surfing.
The Kooks on Mom’s Couch were too fearful and outnumbered to show up at the council meeting, and they lost. Their only recourse was to make some ugly videos, spew a little hate, and yell at mom to pick up another tub of ice cream at the Malaga Cove Ranch Market. And a sixer.
We teach our kids that sometimes the right thing is the hard thing, but maybe we’ve lied to them a little bit: The right thing is always the hard thing. The right thing is the Gandhi thing, the MLK thing, the Lincoln thing. It’s the path everyone wants to take until they note it’s overgrown with weeds, and each blade of grass is the serrated edge of a knife.
Like every leader, this kid has made the rank and file who support her dig in. If she’s willing to go to the lectern and advocate for safer streets, the nameless hundreds in her corner are willing to dig in, too, from the elected officials to the police to the Lycra-clad to the overwhelming majority of decent people in PVE who are sickened by these clowns.
Doubt me? Just watch. ‘Cuz three feet, fellas, it’s the law. Even in good old PVE.
END
————————
Subscribe to this blog now! Special offer ends never! For $2.99 per month you can get front row seats to the Lunada Bay Boys on Mom’s Couch as they put on a clinic called “How to surf like a kook.” Click here and select the “subscribe” link in the upper right-hand corner. Thank you!
Cycling in the South Bay 