Pollution Control
I'm so sick right now. I'm nauseated and my throat and lungs are raw and my head is throbbing, as has gone on all day. Who knew -- no sooner did I stop fighting to get the felon off our street (a gift of Mayor Eric Garcetti's failed homelessness policy) than sociopaths started poisoning my neighborhood with smoke.
Garcetti did this to us, too. Another incompetent pol who doesn't think through policy he puts in place, all the way to the potential unintended consequences. PS He's "green," "progressive," and like the second person in LA to show off his OG Prius.
It's a COVID open-air parking lot "restaurant," which I'd be cheering if sociopathic chef @vartanabgaryan served food that didn't pollute our homes (feet away). Sick every day from his pollution in my home. Losing writing days. Googling creative ways to breathe in my home. #greed pic.twitter.com/RZdf0TKap6
— Amy Alkon (@amyalkon) October 4, 2020
I'm sick every day now and can't write. There is no state or local agency that has yet to fail us. I pitched this to a law firm and also will call the Feds on Monday.
I am working on stopping it, and Gregg (fucking hero), found the last two air purifiers in LA and drove to the SF Valley to get them before the pollution started Friday night. I still felt terribly sick but not "I should go to the hospital sick" like I did Thursday night. Today, I used an hour and a half to put a condom on my house: plastic painter's cloths taped over windows of as much of the front and door as I could. I also did the crawlspaces. Fumes are still coming in and I feel sick but it is mitigated a bit.
Video of the smoke.
Chef @vartanabgaryan is behind smoke fouling our homes from his outdoor restaurant, taking advantage of how incompetent @mayorofla prohibs clean air enforcement during COVID (that normally requires restaurants to mitigate smoke instead of poisoning residents for profit). #greed https://t.co/bfJXSWW6jE
— Amy Alkon (@amyalkon) October 4, 2020
Comment I tried to post but can't get to post (I'm on it with hosting co):
What they did is open not at their own business but at a business down the street. They have a food truck outside but the cooking surface in it doesn't make for as tasty food as barbecue and people wouldn't be as interested in it. They'd make less money.We are paying for their profits with our health. Totally wrong. Vile.
I'm sick this morning from the fumes, despite covering my house in plastic.
Garcetti enabled this and I have to find a way to stop it (like if I can get the EPA to force Garcetti to enforce pollution measures). How obscene.
I behave decently because I'm a decent human being, not because I am forced to be a decent human being by law.
Imagine profiting by harming other people's health, forcing them to breathe toxic fumes in their homes. Last night, I sweltered in mine because I can't open the door or windows to get in cool air because our air is polluted.
I wrote to to one of the owners begging for mitigation (after I walked over to his restaurant location in tears, so sick).. He thought he'd go all clever I guess -- like if he didn't respond the email asking for mitigation didn't exist. Bad idea.
I lost my whole writing day to feeling nauseated, with raw lungs and throat and a headache. Gregg said to go after the chef. I started doing that on Twitter.
Shame on him, Vartan Abgaryan, for poisoning us in our homes. Disgusting.
Asshole dreamed of being a doctor. Instead he's a poisoner, victimizing those of us who are sitting ducks feet from this business, who have a basic human right to breathe clean, unfouled air in our neighborhood and IN OUR OWN HOMES.
https://www.great-taste.net/articles/chef-de-cuisine/chef-vartan-abgaryan/
My email just now with this comment to Paul Pruitt, one of the owners at Yours Truly Venice, the restaurant victiimizing us by taking away our very basic right to breathe clean air in our homes.
subj: you cannot poison us in our homes another nightThis cannot continue tonight, your fuming noxious smoke into our homes.
It simply is not right. It is not acceptable. My breathing is not yours and Vartan Abgaryan's and Reiss's to take. The fact that the City has abdicated its responsibility, via Garcetti stopping enforcement of LADBS code to make businesses mitigate their fumes rather than pouring them into residents homes, does not mean you have a right to make bigger profits at the expense of our lungs and the rest of our health.
And how horrible that you are taking away countless writing days from me by sickening me in my own home as well as forcing me to find ways to force you to behave like decent human beings. I'm stressed out and in tears right now, yet another day, because I have a business robbing me of the clean air in my home five nights a week.
You all are POLLUTERS. POLLUTERS. Polluting our air and our homes. Own that: "I'm a air polluter, victimizing residents who have the misfortune of City codes to protect them against abusers like me being lifted by incompetent politicians for COVID." (Does our right to breathe go on pause because -- get this -- there's a lung impairing pandemic?)
WHAT SORT OF PERSON SAYS, I WILL FOUL YOUR AIR AND HARM YOUR HEALTH BECAUSE MY PROFITS WILL BE TOO SMALL IF I DON'T DO THAT?!!
My lungs are not yours. My health and my neighbors' health is precious and you are making us sick with terrible harmful particulate and toxic chemicals from wood and charcoal smoke as well as perhaps using illegal lighter fluid to start the fire. Also very toxic.
You have no right to poison me in my own home and pollute our air, which you are very much doing -- look up BBQ smoke for two seconds on Google or read the postings on my gate. Shameful.
You are victimizing us because you can't be forced into behaving like decent human beings right now. Shameful. Terrible.
Is there a reason he can't cook inside? I mean I get why the diners need to be outside but why can't they bring the prepared food outside?
NicoleK at October 4, 2020 1:27 AM
Nicole I think it has to do with workplace COVID restrictions, the kitchens may not be large enough for 'distancing' or some such. Because a lot of the restaurants with open air seating are doing the same and often with set-ups that you wouldn't otherwise try to operate out doors. Garcetti's mandates are so ad hoc that it's hard to know for sure
dona at October 4, 2020 3:41 AM
Amy Alkon
https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2020/10/pollution-contr.html#comment-7535010">comment from NicoleKWhat they did is open not at their own business but at a business down the street. They have a food truck outside but the cooking surface in it doesn't make for as tasty food as barbecue and people wouldn't be as interested in it. They'd make less money.
We are paying for their profits with our health. Totally wrong. Vile.
I'm sick this morning from the fumes, despite covering my house in plastic.
Garcetti enabled this and I have to find a way to stop it (like if I can get the EPA to force Garcetti to enforce pollution measures). How obscene.
I behave decently because I'm a decent human being, not because I am forced to be a decent human being by law.
Imagine profiting by harming other people's health, forcing them to breathe toxic fumes in their homes. Last night, I sweltered in mine because I can't open the door or windows to get in cool air because our air is polluted.
I wrote to to one of the owners begging for mitigation (after I walked over to his restaurant locatioin in tears, so sick).. He thought he'd go al clever I guess -- like if he didn't respond the email asking for mitigation didn't exist. Bad idea.
I lost my whole writing day to feeling nauseated, with raw lungs and throat and a headache. Gregg said to go after the chef. I started doing that on Twitter.
Shame on him, Vartan Abgaryan, for poisoning us in our homes. Disgusting.
Asshole dreamed of being a doctor. Instead he's a poisoner, victimizing those of us who are sitting ducks feet from this business, who have a basic human right to breathe clean, unfouled air in our neighborhood and IN OUR OWN HOMES.
https://www.great-taste.net/articles/chef-de-cuisine/chef-vartan-abgaryan/
Amy Alkon
at October 4, 2020 7:25 AM
I feel for you. We have forest fires to the southwest of us. It has been a dry year. I am so sensitive to smoke, I don’t even use my wood burning fireplace anymore.
Anyway for two days the air was so full of ask and smoke I didn’t leave my house. Fortunately the wind changed. Hasn’t been quite so bad for the last week, although my eyes still sting.
Isab at October 4, 2020 7:45 AM
Test.
Gregg Sutter at October 4, 2020 11:34 AM
Chrome Test
Gregg Sutter at October 4, 2020 11:37 AM
Timed test
Gregg Sutter at October 4, 2020 11:38 AM
“I behave decently because I'm a decent human being, not because I am forced to be a decent human being by law.”
First of all, sorry you’ve having to deal with this, especially after your recent experience with the rude and menacing homeless people.
Second, one of the reasons we have laws and regulations is because there are business owners, and other people, who don’t behave decently.
For just one example, which also involves smoke, when Seattle passed its ban on indoor smoking back in 2005, conservatives and libertarians were outraged by the law — a law that was created by Initiative 901, which Washington state voters approved by a margin of nearly two to one in November 2005 — seeing it as an unjust imposition on the rights of business owners to do whatever they please.
What was pointed out to them by many proponents was that if smokers had behaved decently — by stepping outside to smoke instead of spewing their noxious and toxic fumes indoors, to be inhaled by employees and non-smoking customers — or if business owners had behaved decently by requiring smokers to step outside to suck on their precious cigs — there would have been no need for Initiative 901.
JD at October 4, 2020 3:51 PM
Hope it gets better.
"decent human being" if you ask 100 people what that is you'll get many different answers for various situations.
Joe j at October 4, 2020 4:08 PM
What was pointed out to them by many proponents was that if smokers had behaved decently — by stepping outside to smoke instead of spewing their noxious and toxic fumes indoors, to be inhaled by employees and non-smoking customers — or if business owners had behaved decently by requiring smokers to step outside to suck on their precious cigs — there would have been no need for Initiative 901.
JD at October 4, 2020 3:51 PM
No laws in Japan governing smoking in restaurants, and yet more and more of them are non smoking. Gee, I wonder how that works? Maybe when people chose not to go to places that allow smoking, restaurants adapt to the market?
Isab at October 4, 2020 4:26 PM
In other words, in Japan, people probably revere good manners and other people in general than they revere the law, so etiquette leads the way. Surprise, surprise.
The same may well be true in Canada, but I don't know for sure.
Not so in the U.S., unfortunately. Too many seem to think that submitting to rules that didn't used to exist would be seen as a weakness to be further exploited. ("Give your bosses an inch, and they'll take a mile.") Therefore, the American attitude is to fight back, selfishly, against any new rules, even when those rules should have existed all along.
From Miss Manners, in 1995:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1995-07-28-9507280006-story.html
"Gentle Reader: That rules of etiquette should have to be turned into law because people are not willing to obey them out of simple decency, but must be forced by fear of punishment, is something that distresses Miss Manners even more than it does you, she promises you.
"What an embarrassing failure it is for etiquette that it cannot mandate respect at the workplace, without having to get etiquette's big brother, The Law, to threaten to beat everyone up..."
Lenona at October 4, 2020 10:36 PM
The middle of a pandemic that causes breathing problems seems like a bad time to fill the air with smoke.
NicoleK at October 5, 2020 5:25 AM
Unintended consequences NicoleK. This wasn't a problem earlier. So presumably the restaurant had a better way of dealing with the smoke. A way that is now illegal due to the pandemic.
The dry cleaning industry is a good example of this. Early in the industry the chemicals they used weren't that great for the environment when used on the industrial scale. So those chemicals got banned. And then people switched to newer chemicals that were even worse for the environment. But at least they weren't banned. Rinse and repeat a few dozen times.
Ben at October 5, 2020 6:03 AM
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