Rainy News

Groupon halts all gun-related deals

Label: Business

Groupon Inc. signage is displayed outside of company headquarters in Chicago, Illinois.
(Tim Boyle / Bloomberg)

By Samantha Bomkamp

January 21, 2013, 5:24 p.m.

Groupon Inc. has stopped all current and future gun-related deals, bowing to customer pressure a month after the deadly mass shooting in Newtown, Conn.

The Chicago company said it has canceled existing and planned discounts for shooting ranges, conceal-and-carry and clay shooting.

A statement from Groupon didn't specify the company's motives or when it would resume such deals, other than to say that the "category is under review following recent customer and merchant feedback."

The statement, issued Monday, said the company plans to review its international standards for these deals while they're on hold.

The move has been criticized by some merchants who say their deals were canceled abruptly because of the change in policy. Some media outlets cited a Texas gun shop owner who is calling for a Groupon boycott after he said the site scrapped his deal for a concealed handgun training course.

Several other companies have distanced themselves from gun makers and related businesses since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 students and six adults were killed. Dick's Sporting Goods stopped selling guns in its store nearest to the school in Newtown and stopped selling certain rifles from its stores nationwide.

Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management sold its stake in the company that made the rifle used in the shooting, and the nation's largest teacher pension fund has moved to sell its stakes in gun and ammunition makers.

sbomkamp@tribune.com

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L.A. transit officials release analysis for closing '710 gap'

Label: World

Many Pasadena residents are strongly opposed to on option in the MTA report -- extending the 710 Freeway via an underground tunnel to the 210 Freeway.
(January 18, 2013)

By Daniel Siegal, Los Angeles Times

January 20, 2013, 7:21 p.m.

Los Angeles County transportation officials have released the final version of their analysis of alternatives for closing the so-called 710 gap between Alhambra and Pasadena, setting the stage for more vigorous environmental review.

The analysis by the county Metropolitan Transportation Authority focuses on five options — down from an initial 39 — for reducing traffic and providing better transportation access in the area between the end of the 710 Freeway in Alhambra and the 210 Freeway in Pasadena.

They include a "no build" option, better managing of street traffic flow, bolstering rapid bus and light rail transit, and constructing a controversial tunnel to connect the freeways.

The California Department of Transportation — which acquired about 500 homes in Pasadena, South Pasadena and Los Angeles since the 1970s with the intention of building a surface freeway to close the 710 gap — has said that once the Alternatives Analysis Report is released, it will be able to identify some surplus homes and move to sell them.

The MTA will hold three community open houses to share the report's information: from 6 to 8 p.m. Jan. 23 at Maranantha High School, from 6 to 8 p.m. Jan. 24 at San Marino Community Church, and from 9 to 11 a.m. Jan. 26 in the Golden Eagle Building at Cal State L.A. MTA representatives will talk about the five options that will be carried into the Draft Environmental Impact Report, which is expected to be completed by early 2014.

daniel.siegal@latimes.com

ABC News' Barbara Walters hospitalized after fall

Label: Lifestyle

NEW YORK (AP) — Veteran ABC newswoman Barbara Walters has fallen at an inauguration party at an ambassador's home in Washington and has been hospitalized.

Walters, 83, fell Saturday night on a step at the residence of Britain's ambassador to the United States, Peter Westmacott, ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said. The fall left Walters with a cut on her forehead, he said.

Walters, out of an abundance of caution, went to a hospital for treatment of the cut and for a full examination, Schneider said on Sunday. She was alert and was "telling everyone what to do, which we all take as a very positive sign," he said.

It was unclear when Walters might be released from the hospital, which ABC didn't identify.

Walters was TV news' first female superstar, making headlines in 1976 as a network anchor with an unprecedented $1 million annual salary. During more than three decades at ABC, and before that at NBC, her exclusive interviews with rulers, royalty and entertainers have brought her celebrity status. In 1997, she created "The View," a live weekday talk show that became an unexpected hit.

Walters had heart surgery in May 2010 but returned to active duty on "The View" that September, declaring, "I'm fine!"

Even in her ninth decade, Walters continues to keep a busy schedule, including appearances on "The View," prime-time interviews and her annual special, "10 Most Fascinating People," on which, in December, she asked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie if he considered himself fit enough to be president someday. (Christie, although acknowledging he is "more than a little" overweight, replied he would be up to the job.)

Last June, Walters apologized for trying to help a former aide to Syrian President Bashar Assad land a job or get into college in the United States. She acknowledged the conflict in trying to help Sheherazad Jaafari, daughter of the Syrian ambassador to the United States and a one-time press aide to Assad. Jaafari helped Walters land an interview with the Syrian president that aired in December 2011.

Walters said she realized the help she offered Jaafari was a conflict and said, "I regret that."

Well: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Label: Health

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richters’ house in West Palm Beach.

“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”

But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

“I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

There is, in fact, little scientific dogma on cat navigation. Migratory animals like birds, turtles and insects have been studied more closely, and use magnetic fields, olfactory cues, or orientation by the sun.

Scientists say it is more common, although still rare, to hear of dogs returning home, perhaps suggesting, Dr. Bradshaw said, that they have inherited wolves’ ability to navigate using magnetic clues. But it’s also possible that dogs get taken on more family trips, and that lost dogs are more easily noticed or helped by people along the way.

Cats navigate well around familiar landscapes, memorizing locations by sight and smell, and easily figuring out shortcuts, Dr. Bradshaw said.

Strange, faraway locations would seem problematic, although he and Patrick Bateson, a behavioral biologist at Cambridge University, say that cats can sense smells across long distances. “Let’s say they associate the smell of pine with wind coming from the north, so they move in a southerly direction,” Dr. Bateson said.

Peter Borchelt, a New York animal behaviorist, wondered if Holly followed the Florida coast by sight or sound, tracking Interstate 95 and deciding to “keep that to the right and keep the ocean to the left.”

But, he said, “nobody’s going to do an experiment and take a bunch of cats in different directions and see which ones get home.”

The closest, said Roger Tabor, a British cat biologist, may have been a 1954 study in Germany which cats placed in a covered circular maze with exits every 15 degrees most often exited in the direction of their homes, but more reliably if their homes were less than five kilometers away.

New research by the National Geographic and University of Georgia’s Kitty Cams Project, using video footage from 55 pet cats wearing video cameras on their collars, suggests cat behavior is exceedingly complex.

For example, the Kitty Cams study found that four of the cats were two-timing their owners, visiting other homes for food and affection. Not every cat, it seems, shares Holly’s loyalty.

KittyCams also showed most of the cats engaging in risky behavior, including crossing roads and “eating and drinking substances away from home,” risks Holly undoubtedly experienced and seems lucky to have survived.

But there have been other cats who made unexpected comebacks.

“It’s actually happened to me,” said Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist who hosts “My Cat From Hell” on Animal Planet. While living in Boulder, Colo., he moved across town, whereupon his indoor cat, Rabbi, fled and appeared 10 days later at the previous house, “walking five miles through an area he had never been before,” Mr. Galaxy said.

Professor Tabor cited longer-distance reports he considered credible: Murka, a tortoiseshell in Russia, traveling about 325 miles home to Moscow from her owner’s mother’s house in Voronezh in 1989; Ninja, who returned to Farmington, Utah, in 1997, a year after her family moved from there to Mill Creek, Wash.; and Howie, an indoor Persian cat in Australia who in 1978 ran away from relatives his vacationing family left him with and eventually traveled 1,000 miles to his family’s home.

Professor Tabor also said a Siamese in the English village of Black Notley repeatedly hopped a train, disembarked at White Notley, and walked several miles back to Black Notley.

Still, explaining such journeys is not black and white.

In the Florida case, one glimpse through the factual fog comes on the little cat’s feet. While Dr. Bradshaw speculated Holly might have gotten a lift, perhaps sneaking under the hood of a truck heading down I-95, her paws suggest she was not driven all the way, nor did Holly go lightly.

“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” Ms. Richter said. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.”

Scientists say that is consistent with a long walk, since back feet provide propulsion, while front claws engage in activities like tearing. The Richters also said Holly had gone from 13.5 to 7 pounds.

Holly hardly seemed an adventurous wanderer, though her background might have given her a genetic advantage. Her mother was a feral cat roaming the Richters’ mobile home park, and Holly was born inside somebody’s air-conditioner, Ms. Richter said. When, at about six weeks old, Holly padded into their carport and jumped into the lap of Mr. Richter’s mother, there were “scars on her belly from when the air conditioner was turned on,” Ms. Richter said.

Scientists say that such early experience was too brief to explain how Holly might have been comfortable in the wild — after all, she spent most of her life as an indoor cat, except for occasionally running outside to chase lizards. But it might imply innate personality traits like nimbleness or toughness.

“You’ve got these real variations in temperament,” Dr. Bekoff said. “Fish can by shy or bold; there seem to be shy and bold spiders. This cat, it could be she has the personality of a survivor.”

He said being an indoor cat would not extinguish survivalist behaviors, like hunting mice or being aware of the sun’s orientation.

The Richters — Bonnie, 63, a retired nurse, and Jacob, 70, a retired airline mechanics’ supervisor and accomplished bowler — began traveling with Holly only last year, and she easily tolerated a hotel, a cabin or the R.V.

But during the Good Sam R.V. Rally in Daytona, when they were camping near the speedway with 3,000 other motor homes, Holly bolted when Ms. Richter’s mother opened the door one night. Fireworks the next day may have further spooked her, and, after searching for days, alerting animal agencies and posting fliers, the Richters returned home catless.

Two weeks later, an animal rescue worker called the Richters to say a cat resembling Holly had been spotted eating behind the Daytona franchise of Hooters, where employees put out food for feral cats.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, Barb Mazzola, a 52-year-old university executive assistant, noticed a cat “barely standing” in her backyard in West Palm Beach, struggling even to meow. Over six days, Ms. Mazzola and her children cared for the cat, putting out food, including special milk for cats, and eventually the cat came inside.

They named her Cosette after the orphan in Les Misérables, and took her to a veterinarian, Dr. Sara Beg at Paws2Help. Dr. Beg said the cat was underweight and dehydrated, had “back claws and nail beds worn down, probably from all that walking on pavement,” but was “bright and alert” and had no parasites, heartworm or viruses. “She was hesitant and scared around people she didn’t know, so I don’t think she went up to people and got a lift,” Dr. Beg said. “I think she made the journey on her own.”

At Paws2Help, Ms. Mazzola said, “I almost didn’t want to ask, because I wanted to keep her, but I said, ‘Just check and make sure she doesn’t have a microchip.’” When told the cat did, “I just cried.”

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists.

“We haven’t the slightest idea how they do this,” Mr. Galaxy said. “Anybody who says they do is lying, and, if you find it, please God, tell me what it is.”

The Five: Spotting garage sale treasures and reselling them

Label: Business

Can you make money buying hidden treasures at yard and garage sales, then reselling them? The experts say you can, but don't expect it to be easy. Some advice from the pros:

•Focus on a particular type of item. "Start with something you really like and have a strong interest in," recommended Aaron LaPedis, author of "The Garage Sale Millionaire." "This will ensure that the treasure-hunting process will be much more fulfilling, as well as more profitable for you." Research your specialty to see which items are most in demand.

•Check newspapers and Craigslist for sales listings, looking especially for neighborhood-wide sales where you can shop at multiple sites in a small area. "Plan your route to visit sales close together," advised Karen Harden, author of "Treasure Hunters' Guide to Yard Sales." "You do not want to run all over town backtracking and covering the same area over and over."

•Consider the neighborhood. "If it's a newer neighborhood with families, keep in mind the items for sale will be different than what you may find at a retirement community for empty-nesters," noted Lynda Hammond, the "Garage Sale Gal" of garagesalegal.com "So if you're looking for toys, go to the family sales. Is it antiques you're interested in? Check out older, more established areas and retirement communities."

•Shop early — or late. "If you want the best selection you have to get there before anyone else," Hammond said. "I've gone to sales at 7 a.m., asked for specific items and was told 'I just sold that.'" On the other hand, to get bargains, consider arriving late in the day, when homeowners just want to get rid of things, Harden said.

•When evaluating an item, consider condition, packaging and rarity, but don't assume something's valuable just because it's old. "Age is not the primary determining factor in assessing a collectible's level of value," LaPedis said.

scott.wilson@latimes.com

Stan Musial dies at 92; Cardinals' Hall of Fame hitter

Label: World

To generations of baseball fans, he was simply "Stan the Man."

Stan Musial, a legendary slugger for the St. Louis Cardinals who came to embody one of the sport's most successful franchises, died Saturday. He was 92.

Musial, who had Alzheimer's disease, died at his home in the St. Louis suburb of Ladue, the Cardinals announced.

During his 22 seasons, all with the Cardinals, Musial won seven National League batting titles and three most valuable player awards. A career .331 hitter, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1969, becoming only the fourth player chosen in his first year of eligibility.

"Stan Musial was the greatest player in Cardinals history and one of the best players in the history of baseball," William DeWitt Jr., the Cardinals' chairman, said Saturday in a statement.

Musial's nickname was inspired by Brooklyn Dodger fans who marveled at his mastery of the Dodgers at Ebbets Field and complained, "Here comes the man again."

Don Newcombe, a star pitcher for the Dodgers, told Sports Illustrated in 2010: "I could have rolled the ball up there against Musial, and he would have pulled out a golf club and hit it out."

Stanley Frank Musial was born Nov. 21, 1920, in Donora, Pa., to Lukasz and Mary Lancos Musial, the fifth of their six children.

In high school, Musial was a two-sport star. He could have played college basketball on scholarship but signed with the Cardinals as a pitcher in 1938.

He was so wild in Williamson, W.Va., the lowest level of the Cardinals' minor league system, that his manager suggested he be released. But another player's injury gave him a chance to play outfield, and he saved his career by hitting .352. The next season in Daytona Beach, Fla., Musial hurt his left shoulder diving for a ball in center field, ending his pitching career.

"My arm never did get better," he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2002. "I couldn't throw hard from then on. But it never bothered my hitting."

In 1941, he reached the majors despite starting the season on a lowly minor league team in Springfield, Mo. He hit .426 in 12 games late in the season for St. Louis, and the Cardinals finished second to the Dodgers. Musial had a remarkable season, hitting a combined .364 after jumping through the St. Louis minor league system. "Facing oblivion in the spring, he reached stardom," according to the 2001 book "Musial: From Stash to Stan the Man."

With Musial in the lineup beginning in 1942, the Cardinals reached the World Series in three consecutive seasons, winning in 1942 and 1944.

"The '42 Cardinal club was the best I was with. If the war hadn't come along, I feel we could have won maybe six or seven pennants in a row," St. Louis outfielder Terry Moore said in the 1994 book "Stan the Man Musial: Born to Be a Ballplayer."

In 1943, Musial won his first batting title and MVP award when the Cardinals lost the series to the New York Yankees.

Musial said he "memorized the speed at which every pitcher in the league threw his fastball, curve and slider. Then I'd pick up the speed and rotation of the ball in the first 30 feet of its flight and knew how it would move once it approached the plate."

Leo Durocher, who faced Musial as a player and manager, once said the only way to pitch him was "under the plate."

Musial's signature feature was a distinct batting stance that Chicago White Sox pitcher Ted Lyons once said made him look like "a kid peeking around the corner to see if the cops are coming." Former St. Louis Manager Whitey Herzog had told Musial, "I tried to have your stance and I was in the minors for eight years."

After spending 1945 in the Navy, Musial again led the Cardinals to the World Series in 1946, when they defeated the Boston Red Sox in seven games. Musial and Red Sox star Ted Williams struggled in the series, each hitting only .222. It was Musial's last World Series.

His best season may have been 1948, when he was named the league's most valuable player for the third time. Healthy after having appendicitis in 1947, Musial led the league in almost every offensive category, including his .376 batting average and 131 runs batted in. He just missed winning the triple crown with 39 home runs, one short of the league lead.

He hit five home runs during a doubleheader in 1954 and reached a career milestone in 1958 with his 3,000th hit.

Musial retired after the 1963 season and spent a year as the Cardinals' general manager. He remained a celebrity in St. Louis, running Stan Musial & Biggie's Restaurant, which he opened in 1949.

At baseball's 2009 All-Star game in St. Louis, Musial received a standing ovation when he was driven onto the field before the game. He handed a ball to President Obama, who threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

When Musial received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 2011, Obama noted that "his brilliance could come in blinding bursts" and said he "remains to this day an icon, untarnished … a gentleman you'd want your kids to emulate."

Musial's wife of 72 years, Lillian, died in May. He is survived by their son, Richard; daughters, Gerry Ashley, Janet Schwarze and Jean Edmonds; 11 grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren.

"He had greatness and warmth and affection and appreciation," sportscaster Bob Costas, whose career started in St. Louis, told Scripps Howard News Service in 2003. "But there wasn't a specific thing for people to hang their hat on — other than those who really followed him and saw him play.... All he was was incredibly good for an incredibly long time and an unbelievably nice guy."

Thursby is a former Times staff writer.

news.obits@latimes.com

Timeline: Kim Dotcom’s year, from Megaupload to Mega

Label: Technology

AUCKLAND (Reuters) – Here are the milestones in the past year for Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. Dotcom plans to launch on January 20 a new online file storage system, known as Mega.

January 20, 2012 – Seventy armed New Zealand police raid Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom’s mansion outside Auckland, acting on a request from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Dotcom and his colleagues Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk are served extradition and search warrants, arrested, and taken into custody. As operators of the website, they are charged with online piracy, fraud and money laundering, and their computers and files are seized. Megaupload is closed down. The raid occurs on the same day U.S. lawmakers axe anti-piracy legislation following heavy public opposition.

February 22 – Dotcom is released on bail, but his movements are restricted and he is prohibited from leaving New Zealand. His bail conditions are eventually relaxed to allow him free movement within the country, while the millionaire is given some access to his frozen funds to pay his legal team and living costs.

June 28 – A New Zealand court rules that search warrants used by local police to raid the Dotcom mansion were illegal, and moves by the FBI to copy data from Dotcom’s computers to take offshore were also unlawful. The court’s action is seen by many as weakening the extradition case against Megaupload.

August 16 – U.S. efforts to extradite Dotcom are dealt another blow as a New Zealand court rules that prosecutors must show evidence to support charges of internet piracy and copyright breaches. The judge in the case says withholding evidence from Dotcom would give Washington a significant advantage in the extradition hearing. She also rules that the document used to order his extradition was illegal.

September 27 – New Zealand’s Prime Minister admits that the country’s spy agency illegally carried out surveillance on Dotcom, a resident of the country, despite a law which prohibits monitoring citizens and residents.

October 10 – A U.S. federal judge rules that the U.S. government’s criminal case against Megaupload will proceed, while leaving open the option of dismissing the case at a later date on grounds including the possibility that delays in proceedings have denied Megaupload to its right to due process.

January 20, 2013 – Dotcom is due to launch his new cyberlocker, Mega.co.nz, whose encryption system is designed to offer water-tight privacy protection of user files. The launch comes as Dotcom and his colleagues await their extradition hearing, which has been delayed until August.

(Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu)

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Eagles talk about new Showtime documentary

Label: Lifestyle

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — The Eagles picked the producer of their new Showtime documentary "The History of the Eagles" — but they insist that's about all the control they had in the making of it.

"It's really not a film that represents our point of view so much," Glen Frey said Saturday as the quartet spoke at the Sundance Film Festival hours before the film's premiere.

The film was directed by Alison Ellwood and produced by Alex Gibney, whose other documentaries include the Academy Award-winning "Taxi to the Dark Side" and "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room."

"The History of the Eagles" will be shown in two parts on Showtime Feb. 15-16. It includes 40-year-old footage that was in the band's archives, as well as recent interviews with the band.

Henley said he was interested in someone making a documentary about the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers but was unimpressed with recent music documentaries. So, he asked to see the work of Oscar-winning documentary filmmakers and was led to Gibney.

From there, he worked to convince Gibney that he should tell the band's story, and they had "zero" influence on its outcome.

"We have a good story to tell and I think he's a great storyteller," Frey said, adding that Gibney told him, "We're going to make a movie, and we're going to tell the truth."

Don Henley said the band hasn't even seen the final cut yet. "I hope we like it," he joked.

Frey said what surprised him most about the film, and seeing the old footage, was "how much fun we had."

That may surprise people who are familiar with the band's well-documented discord, including their acrimonious breakup in 1982 (they got back together in 1994).

"Most of the things that have been written about this band have focused on conflict — the journalism of conflict," Henley said. "It sells papers and magazines, but one thing that Glen said that people will see in this documentary is that we had a lot of fun. Some of it's not on film, and that's good."

"The bitter fighting that the media loved to talk about really didn't take place. We argued a lot, we discussed stuff a lot, and that tension had a lot of to do with the creative process," Walsh said. "We didn't hate each other; we didn't have fist fights, none of that."

Walsh, Henley, Frey and Timothy Schmit were expected to attend the premiere later Saturday.

Frey said the band might eventually make new music together. Their last album together was 2007's "Long Road Out of Eden."

"I think what we realized is how good we are together and how things have changed, and it would be a shame if we didn't try to find a way to create some more new music," Frey said. "People really like to hear us sing, we really do well, we still perform at a very high level, so for me, it would be great."

___

Nekesa Mumbi Moody is the AP's global entertainment and lifestyles editor. Follow her at http://www.twitter.com/nekesamumbi .

___

Online:

http://www.eaglesband.com

http://www.sundance.org/festival

Well: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Label: Health

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

Cats navigate well around familiar landscapes, memorizing locations by sight and smell, and easily figuring out shortcuts, Dr. Bradshaw said.

But, he said, “nobody’s going to do an experiment and take a bunch of cats in different directions and see which ones get home.”

For example, the Kitty Cams study found that four of the cats were two-timing their owners, visiting other homes for food and affection. Not every cat, it seems, shares Holly’s loyalty.

But there have been other cats who made unexpected comebacks.

Professor Tabor also said a Siamese in the English village of Black Notley repeatedly hopped a train, disembarked at White Notley, and walked several miles back to Black Notley.

Still, explaining such journeys is not black and white.

“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” Ms. Richter said. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.”

He said being an indoor cat would not extinguish survivalist behaviors, like hunting mice or being aware of the sun’s orientation.

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists.

“We haven’t the slightest idea how they do this,” Mr. Galaxy said. “Anybody who says they do is lying, and, if you find it, please God, tell me what it is.”

Downtown L.A.'s edgy arts district is neighborhood in transition

Label: Business

When Gideon Kotzer set out to open a discount electronics store in the mid-1990s, he deliberately chose an old warehouse in the cultural middle of nowhere — the arts district of downtown Los Angeles, which charitably could be called sketchy.

Crazy Gideon's on Traction Avenue became an island of commerce in an area that saw little other retail activity beyond illegal drug sales. The store's remoteness in an otherwise unwelcoming warren of aging brick and concrete industrial buildings was central to Kotzer's business strategy.

"He bought that space with the mind-set that if people would drive to a desolate, faraway neighborhood, they wouldn't want to leave empty-handed," his son Daniel Kotzer said.

PHOTOS: A neighborhood in transition

Crazy Gideon's has closed, and its formerly shabby space in the 1917 structure is expected to open to the public again this year as an expansive brew pub serving house-made beer with meals. The upgrade is emblematic of changes going on throughout the arts district.

The neighborhood along the Los Angeles River east of downtown's Civic Center is drawing favorable comparisons to New York's meatpacking district, where trendy shops, restaurants, hotels and offices have taken over many industrial buildings that were strictly blue collar for decades.

The transformation has such momentum that some of the neighborhood's biggest supporters expect that it will be difficult to find artists in the arts district in another decade as gentrification drives up rents and pushes low-paid artists to cheaper locales.

But for now, the arts district is in a sweet spot of transition for many. Vegetable wholesalers and furniture makers share streets with top-flight restaurants and front-line technology and entertainment firms. Its walls sport elaborate murals — and foreboding razor wire.

"There are very rough patches," said architect Scott Johnson, who lives in a condominium on Industrial Street. "It's muscular. It's complicated. It's interesting."

Part of the appeal for Johnson, who lived in the meatpacking district in the late 1970s, is the roughness most suburbanites would find off-putting. He calls it "authenticity" in a time when "we're getting bombarded with fake stuff."

The spine of the arts district is Mateo Street, a truck-laden thoroughfare named after early landowner Matthew "Don Mateo" Keller. The district evolved from agricultural uses including Mateo's winery in the mid-1800s to being the city's industrial heart in the early 20th century.

One of the most ambitious private developments of that era was Union Terminal Annex, which was connected by rail to the city's seaport and was the second-largest wholesale terminal in the world. Two of the four large remaining buildings are occupied by clothing manufacturer American Apparel Inc., and the owners are improving and divvying up long-vacant remaining space for other business tenants including the makers of Splendid and Ella Moss apparel.

The advanced age of the neighborhood's buildings worked against the district in recent decades as businesses moved to more modern, efficient industrial properties elsewhere in the region. Those that remained often barricaded themselves behind tall gates and barbed wire as the area gained a reputation for crime and homelessness.

"There were drug addicts and prostitutes on the corner when we started," said restaurateur Yassmin Sarmadi, who began working on French bistro Church & State seven years ago. "Now limousines pull up on a regular basis."

Sarmadi opened her bistro in the former West Coast headquarters of National Biscuit Co., a seven-story factory built in 1925 that was renovated and converted to condos in 2006. She was attracted to the historic nature of the building, she said, and the fact that it was remote from the elite restaurant enclaves of the Westside.

"It was far more exciting for me to be in a place that wasn't already 'there,' so to speak," Sarmadi said.

She lives in the arts district and enjoys the company of artists who are neighbors, but knows that the march of prosperity will make it hard for some of them to stay. It may take 10 more years to become as affluent as once-lowly Venice, Sarmadi said, but gentrification will come.

"I think it's inevitable," she said. "It brings a tear to my eye, but it's also progress."

Guiding change is Tyler Stonebraker, who helps young businesses such as film and television production company Skunk set up shop in old warehouses and factories.

Stonebraker's real estate firm Creative Space caters to creative companies that consider nontraditional offices essential to their identities and part of their appeal to desirable workers in the millennial generation.

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