Hollywood Independence Forum

2002-09-15T02:43:00.000-07:00

JILL STEWART 'FORUM' TO AIR GOALS OF HOLLYWOOD INDEPENDENCE

HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 15, 2002 -- The first half-hour segment of a four-part television miniseries hosted by New Times columnist Jill Stewart that studies the goals and candidates of the Hollywood independence movement will air Friday, Sept. 28, at 10 p.m., and again on Saturday, Sept. 29, at 3:30 pm, and each week therafter for the following three weeks on city-owned Channel 36, according to LACTAC program director Steve Grace.

Grace decided to air the series featuring Stewart, a vivacious redhead and popular columnist who is vice president of the Los Angeles Press Club, after viewing a portion of the programs last week. Each show will run twice a week at 10 p.m. on Fridays and 3:30 p.m. on Saturdays, Grace said, starting on Sept. 28 and 29.

The series is also headed to the air on Adelphia cable's locally-originated programming Channel 10, and is available now on the Linux Public Broadcasting Network as streaming video running on Quicktime for Apple products and Real Player for PC users. The first two shows are scheduled to air back-to-back at 2:30 and 3:00 on Sept. 26, and the third and foruth shows will air at 2:30 and 3:00 on Thursday, Sept. 28. They may run again the following week. The cost of dubbing has delayed their showing on public access channels.

The streaming archive is uncut video, while the Adelphia programming is edited both to enhance content and to minimize technical issues that arose during taping at the TAN Broadcast Center at Hollywood's CNN Building on Sunset Blvd.

The Channel 36 video was dubbed to DVC-Pro from the uncut version, while the edits were done at AT&T and Adelphia once Lightning Dubbs had transferred the Beta masters to 3/4" Umatics for public access airing. The sponsors singled out Adelphia chief Bill Rosendahl and South California programming director John Monaghan for special praise, saying the two helped the product get quickly to air by offering timely use of their editing bays.

A DVD of at least two of the shows is also planned. The four shows were all produced in a single day before a studio audience that peppered 10 Hollywood City Council candidates with questions about the proposed city's plans over a five-and-a-half hour shoot sponsored by the Ivar Hill Community Assn.

Candidates include Shea, president of the Ivar Hill Community Assn. and Editor-in-Chief of The American Reporter; Gene LaPietra, a Hollywood night club owner who has financed much of the secession campaign; Edward Dilkes, who is currently the city manager of the Los Angeles County community of Bradbury and city attorney to several other small towns; Entertainment attonrey and anti-Microsoft litigator Michael Ackerman; architect and Hollywood honeowner's association president Paul Ramsey; Los Angeles County HIV/AIDS Commissioner Richard Eastman; Hollywood Ramada Inn owner/operator Jeff Zarrinnam; film director Tad Davis; businessman Garry Sinanian, an Armenian community activist; and senior activist Neal Jano.

The series was scripted by Shea and Mark Shawver, and five-time Emmy Award and Peabody winner Bob Jimenez produced. TAN's operation manager, Berington Van Camper, headed the studio team.

2002-09-03T20:56:00.000-07:00

BLACK INFLUENCE WOULD RISE DRAMATICALLY IN NEW L.A.

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 4, 2002 -- A little-noticed report by the Los Angeles Times on the ethnic makeup of post-secession Los Angeles shows that the African-American population in the new Los Angeles would increase by 43.5 percent if both Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley are allowed to become new cities, and by 35 percent if only the Valley secedes, an American Reporter analysis shows. Here's a streaming video link to a discussion of the story from Linux Public Broadcasting Network.

The Nov. 5 ballot measure here is hotly contested.

A huge increase in the African-American percentage of the population in the new Los Angeles would be a remarkable overnight gain for blacks, especially since it would be achieved without the growing pains of new migration and other social changes. It would be certainly be mirrored in new clout at City Hall, and could result in a gain of as many as two city council seats, other reports suggest.

But the Times data is not consistent with its own reporting on the demographics of secession, nor does it jibe with a report by UCLA professor Eugene Grigsby on blacks' role in the new city that was commissioned by Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Braithwaite Burke.

The Times data show that the Grigsby report, which was reported in the paper but did not subsequently get published, is statistically flawed. Burke voted against Hollywood secession but is neutral on Valley secession. That report took voter rolls and used them bas the basis for comparison, but council, assembly, state senate and supervisorial districts are all based on population, not registered voters.

Clearly, such an increase would dramatically reshape the Los Angeles City Council and help African-Americans balance the huge 65 percent gain since 1990 in the city's Latino population. Those gains have cut the percentage of African-Americans in the present Los Angeles by half in just 10 years and reduced the political clout the community once enjoyed.

One measure of the black community's diminished influence was the firing of black LAPD Chief of Police Bernard C. Parks, a move undertaken by Mayor James Hahn despite ferocious opposition from the city's African-American voters, many of whom helped put Hahn in office. That may be one of the reasons Parks has long resisted being pushed by Hahn into taking a position against secession.

Now, Hahn - aided primarily by wealthy developers who have shunned South Central and Watts and poured millions into the anti-independence movement - appears to be asking black voters to accept a reduction in their influence on city government rather than increase it enormously through granting cityhood to the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood.

The Times has not yet told the black community of such implications, which contradict much of the editorial opinion so far offered by the paper in the escalating debate over cityhood for the Valley and Hollywood.

Hollywood was not included in the Times' calculations but was examined separately by the American Reporter (http://www.american-reporter.com).

Blacks in Hollywood are now roughly 4.1 percent of the population, or 7,503 African-Americans, according to 1997 U.S. Census data provided to the Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCO) by cityhood proponents. The figure is based on 1997 Los Angeles County estimates gathered by scholars at California State University at Northridge.

Thus, when the small number of African-Americans in the proposed Hollywood city's population of 183,000 is figured together with Valley independence, the corresponding gain for blacks in the newly-downsized City of Los Angeles rises to 43.51 percent.

Thus, if Hollywood and the Valley both break away, there will be 336,926 African-Americans in the new Los Angeles population of 2,159,203, or 15.60%. The 4.73 percentage points of gain represents an increase of 43.51 percent from the 10.87 percent proportion blacks enjoyed in the former city.

The Times report breaks down for the first time the ethnic makeup of the two new cities. It has not been widely examined but appears to based on legitimate data, and can be viewed as a graphic on the Internet at http://www.ekay.com/free-hollywood/newlamap.gif.

Currently, the Times says, blacks comprise 401,695 individuals in the present city, or 10.87 percent of its population of 3,694,323.

However, according to the Times' numbers, if Valley cityhood is approved and Hollywood cityhood is not, African-Americans will number 344,429 in the new Los Angeles, or 14.70 percent. That is a 3.83 percentage-point gain from the current 10.87 percent, or a substantial 35.24 percent increase.

Councilman Nate Holden remarked at a recent City Council meeting hearing secession issues that such a gain "might be worth it" to the city's black community despite any risks associated with independence.

Since it is a gain that does not require any new migration to achieve it, the Times' numbers seem to conclusively demonstrate that the major beneficiaries of secession would be the new Los Angeles' African-American community.

African-Americans: The New L.A. and the Old L.A.

Key: CITY
Population
African-Americans
Proportion of African-Americans
Change (+ or -)

OLD L.A. 3,694,323
401,695
10.87 %
No change

NEW L.A. (minus SFV only)
2,342,203
344,429
14.70 %
+ 35.24 %

* SF VALLEY
1,352,120 57,266 4.2 % No change

HOLLYWOOD
183,000
7,503
4.1 %
No change

NEW L.A. (minus both Hwd and SFV)
2,159,203
336,926
15.60 %
+ 43.5 %**

* Net gain of 3.83 % represents 35 % increase from current 10.87 %
** Net gain of 4.73 % represents 43.5 % increase from current 10.87 %

Sources: Los Angeles Times: Census 2000, LAFCO, Eonomic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley; Hollywood VOTE: California State University at Northridge, based on 1997 Los Angeles County estimates.

2002-09-03T05:06:00.000-07:00

TOXIC GASES SHUT DOWN HOLLYWOOD & HIGHLAND PARKING GARAGE

HOLLYWOOD -- The $75 million parking garage built by the CRA for a Canadian developer in Hollywood is causing new headaches unrelated to the financial parking fiasco there -- deadly carbon monoxide fumes shut the garage down and sent three parking valets to the hospital Saturday.

The garage beneath the white elephants at Hollywood & Highland, a $450 million Trizec-Hahn project that is reportedly up for sale along with the firm's Paseo Colorado location in Pasadena, was the subject of heated complaints when it opened before the Oscars and charged $10 or more for short-term parking. The structure uses the money to pay the CRA bonds off, but the plan to do so fell apart under wilting criticism from community leaders, and the rates got cut back to $2 for up to four hours with movie theater validations.

But now a garage stairwell has tested positive for the fumes and sent three Latino workers to the hospital complaining of nausea and eye and throat irritation. That could make it hard to sell, especially since the authorities don't know what caused the poisoning episode and don't want to know, apparently.

Low levels of CO2 were found in the parking garage stairwell but not in other parts of the garage where cars are parked. The episode marked the first time the garage had to be shut down for toxic fumes. The on Sept. 18 is the next big event at the Kodak Theater above the garage.

Meanwhile, the Fire Dept. does not plan to investigate, according to L.A.F.D. spokesman Brian Humphrey.

For obvious reasons, investigations could prove tricky in the highly volatile financial circumstances that now envelop Trizec-Hahn projects. The Paseo Colorado project is up for sale for about $114 million, according to today's Los Angeles Business Journal. Although business appears to be very slow there, the Trizec-Hahn folks say it is "has exceeded sales projections." They don't say it is "making money."

With the Canadian developer's point man serving as chairman of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, it's likely that while the Chamber -- which itself is in a CRA-owned building with a big garage beside it - is running Hollywood's sidewalks, Hollywood & Highland will be safe from official scrutiny on public safety grounds.

The developer has made an enemy of the Hollywood independence movement, however.

The chamber last Friday adopted (by a vote of 23-0, with 1 abstention and 12 absences) a $20,000 report by the firm that manages its Business Improvement District (BID) on Hollywood Blvd., purporting to show that a City of Hollywood would be bad for business. More than a dozen pro-independence candidates and supporters showed up to protest on an hour's notice Friday afternoon.

The idea that cityhood would not pace propserity flies in the face of the common sense view, which is that the most famous city in the world can be turned into an enormous draw for tourists that is not dependent on business taxes and permit fees to stay afloat.

However, as the Business Improvement District shows, a turnaround requires that Hollywood's resources need to be spent in improving Hollywood's attraction to visitors. The chamber wants to turn it around using big private firms who own large chunks of the prime property and to negotiate their deals through the familiar politicvins at City Hall.

Thus, the Chamber of Commerce is in the odd position of believing the CRA and City Hall nine miles away can somehow make that happen while cityhood cannot. An exhaustive state study approved by LAFCO - with Supervisors Yvonne Braithwaite Burke and Zev Yaroslavsky on its board - is a powerful contradicition of the Chamber report by MuniFinancial.

In fact, the Hollywood Blvd. Business Improvement District, or BID, actually does what the City of Hollywood would do on a large scale - and without special taxes on boulevard property owners.

The new city would keep all the tax revenues it generates instead of sending them to the rest of Los Angeles, and would use that money to rebuild its ruined streets, its broken dreams, and its battered image.

Los Angeles, a city with 465 square miles to care about and 15 councilmembers fighting over its priorities, can never come to together to help Hollywood as its own City Council can.

None of the three Los Angeles City Councilmen who divide Hollywood into three parts even live here

, and they are like the blind men and the elephant - unable to see the whole because they only represent its parts. But there's two big white elephants they can't miss on Hollywood Blvd., right atop Trizec-Hahn's Hollywood & Highland.

2002-09-01T16:03:00.000-07:00

RIOT ERUPTS ON SUNSET BLVD. AFTER SHOTS ARE FIRED IN HOLLYWOOD NIGHTCLUB

HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 31, 2002 -- Hollywood residents who have long complained about the voluminous traffic and crowds that bar them from their homes and slow or stop emergency vehicles' access to them were almost proved right Friday night. After shooting erupted in a Hollywood night club, a task force of Hollywood LAPD and California Highway Patrol officers responding to the traffic complaints found themselves in the middle of a riot involving somewhere between 200 and 1,000 people, according to differing police accounts.

The riot, at the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Crescent Heights in Hollywood, broke out about 1 a.m. Saturday morning and traffic backed up for miles in both directions. Emergency vehicles were able to get to the scene, however, but many residents had difficulty escaping from it as quickly as the rioters did.

According to Hollywood LAPD spokesman Sgt. Glen Hees, the traffic task force was on its regular summer weekend traffic-stop duty when security guards ran out of the popular Coconut Teaszer rock club and pleaded for help after someone started shooting inside the club, which was packed with the Labor Day crowd that throngs this area.

Twelve officers "were overwhelmed" when they tried to get inside, he said, and were pushed back by about 200 people "pouring out" of the club. The patrons then began fighting in the middle of the boulevard amid the jammed traffic. Overwhelmed, Sgt. Hees said, he called for backup and about 80 officers in patrol cars and on motorcycles responded from the LAPD, the CHP and the Sheriff's Dept., along with fire engines, a helicopter and an ambulance. The location is a few hundred yards from the West Hollywood border served by the deputies.

This correspondent found himself in the middle of the riot when he and his wife approached the club in our car several minutes after the shooting.Police cars came screaming from every direction and we saw young men fighting police officers in the middle of the street.

As we watched, some police officers drew guns and started to duck behind cars as rioters showered them and the other rioters with rocks and bottles and began to run across and down both sides of the broad boulevard. When the guns came out, we abandoned our car a few feet from cruisers and ran to the sidewalk, where groups of young black men came running from the club. Asked what had happened, they did not respond. They did not appear to be gang members.

It is not clear what precipitated the shooting. I alerted City News Service, which sent out an advisory that was broadcast on KFWB as we returned home. I returned to the scene and videotaped the aftermath about 25 minutes later. KCBS-TVChannel 2, owned by the New York-based Viacom, which also owns the two Hollywood all-news stations, arrived at the scene shortly after the riot began. Neither the Los Angeles Times nor the Daily News, nor any other print newspaper, carried the City News Service report. The Associated Press also declined to cover the incident because there were no injuries reported from the gunshots, although there may have been some.

Such riots have plagued Hollywood for years, and some have resulted in deaths and crippling injuries, but they often get little coverage in local newspapers, radio and television stations because there is no one staffing news departments when they occur, and possibly because their owners, none of whom are based in Los Angeles, feel they have little stake in the city's future.

Police said that in addition to The American Reporter (http://www.american-reporter.com), only Channel 2 showed up to film the incident, which lasted about 45 minutes. There was one arrest, Sgt. Hees said, of a man who repeatedly urged the crowd to keep fighting as police tried to quell the violence. The unidentified man was being held at the Hollywood LAPD station on charges of inciting a riot. It was unclear why police did not make more arrests, or charge the man who was shooting at patrons inside the club.

Apparently, the gunman and the wounded ran outside before police came through the doors and may have escaped even with police parked in front of the club as they came outside.

Although police said they had cleared the club to permit any injured patrons to get treatment, none were transported by ambulance. Sgt. Hees said an investigation of possible injuries is continuing.

Later, when this correspondent returned to the scene with a camera and caught the last of the tactical alert, LAPD Cmdr. Stuart Maislin - who heads the entire department when the police chief is not on duty - arrived to find about 20 officers in about as many patrol cars regrouping to hear senior officers congratulate them for a job well done. There is no question that their rapid response helped prevent more violence.

Had it been covered by the media, the riot might have once again focused attention on the problem of rioting, murders, fighting and traffic jams associated with the vast increase in new liquor licenses in Hollywood that occurred during the tenure of Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg on the Los Angeles City Council.

More than 5,000 arrests for alcohol-related crimes -- including drunk driving, drunkenness in public and drunk and disorderly counts -- were made in Hollywood in 1999, the last year police made such figures available. Although I am a contributor to and often a supporter of Jackie, I do not support her liberal stance on alcoholic beverage licenses, and will work against the oversaturation of liquor permits that now exists if I am elected to the Hollywood City Council.

As a community leader, I dealt with such riots forcefully by calling press conferences and demanding quick action from city officials. As a result, after a series of riots under earlier management I was able to get the Hollywood Palladium briefly closed down in 1993, its management changed and its tattered insides completely refurbished. I also got the La Iguerita sports bar on Yucca Street closed down after four people were shot there one night, and the Triangle Liquor Store at Cahuenga and Franklin closed down when its owner began providing prostitutes to patrons in trailers parked on the property. I also closed down the infamous M/B Club, a "man-boy" sex club that operated on Melrose Blvd. near the 101 Freeway for 25 years without a liquor license despite having a bar that dispensed beer and wine for sale.

I only learned of the M/B Club after a lawyer asked me to investigate the case of an 83-year-old patron who successfully sued the owners when he fell down a flight of stairs while watching a sex act and broke his hip. Rather than call police and alert them to their presence, the club tied the man to a chair, put him in the back of a pickup truck and drove him home, where he stayed for three days before calling paramedics.

Sgt. Hees, however, pointed out that the problem at the Coconut Teaszer, which generally has had a good rapport with the police department, did not stem from it operators but from the patrons who came there Friday night. In fact, I have found them to be reputable operators in the past when I sponsored a draft committee benefit for U.S. Senator John F. Kerry there in 1986, headlined by John Doe of X.

2002-08-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

COUNCIL CANDIDATES ANGRILY DENOUNCE CHAMBER 'BETRAYAL'

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has come out with a $20,000 report from a California outfit named MuniFinancial that executive director Leron Gubler says is well-balanced and was not funded by any anti-secession group. MuniFinancial contracts with the city of Los Angeles to run the Hollywood Business Improvement District, which meets at the Chamber's offices in the CRA-owned Johnny Grant Building. A half-dozen candidates for the Hollywood City Council and a group of their supporters showed up to protest before camera crews from UPN and KTLA (the Los Angeles Times-owned Channel 5), which did not use the story last night.

Gubler said the 20-page report, suggested in April by members of the chamber's planning committee, was started in June and took two months to complete. Dated Aug. 26, it was released Aug. 29. The LAFCO study of Hollywood's viability was two years in the making.

A large group of Hollywood City Council candidates gathered outside the chamber's office to protest the decision, which was made by 23 of its 1,000-odd membership. . Gubler said that about one-third of the 1,000 businesses that make up the chamber are in support of cityhood, while many of the others know little about it, he said. In the past two years he said, three membership surveys have generated 2-to-1 opposition.

Many of the candidates said that the chamber had "betrayed" the small businesses in Hollywood that comprise about 80 percent of the chamber's membership, according to Gubler. Jeff Zarrinnam, a veteran hotel manager and accountant who now owns the Hollywood Ramada Inn at Vermont Blvd. near Sunset Blvd. and is a Hollywood City Council candidate, says his customers have told him for years they are disappointed by the lack of attractions in Hollywood and surprised by the deterioration of the famous community. He said he was startled and shiocked by the chamber's position, and publicly tore up his Hollywood Chamber of Commerce membership certificate.

Candidate Garry Sinanian, an Armenian community leader who runs the Ron's Garden florist shop in Hollywood, agreed with Zarrinnam and also tore up his certificate. Joining him was a top entertainment attorney, Michael Ackerman, a veteran of the long-running Microsoft antitrust suit, who said he saw the same behavior of the software giant being demonstrated by the Hollywood chamber.

Also denouncing the decision was Pat Sripitat, a leader of the Hollywood area Thai community and publisher of the nation's only bilingual Thai-English newspaper.

Architect Paul Ramsey, who heads a large Hollywood Hills homeowner association, also denounced the report, saying it ignored the bright economic picture the new Hollywood will enjoy as compared to that of the City of Los Angeles and the comparably-sized nearby City of Glendale. Ramsey and Bradbury City Manager Ed Dilkes, another candidate, have studiously compared the budgets and per capita expenditures of Glendale, Los Angeles and Hollywood and produced easy-to-read bar charts that show Hollywood will be far better off - and its citizens better care for - than those of either city. Hollywood's budget will amount to roughly $1 million for every 1,000 residents, according to the State Comptroller's study, which is the most conservative thus far.

Five-time Emmy and Peabody Award-winner Bob Jimenez organized the quick response to the chamber's announcement after Gubler contacted Hollywood Vote leader Gene LaPietra to inform him of his decision. Jimenez won his stars in Central America, reporting on U.S. atrocities there for the Today show and other NBC news programs. Until he joined the Hollywood Indepencdence Committee last month, Jimenez was an anchorman at KFWB All-News 98, which is now owned by New York-based Viacom, the same company that owns L.A.'s other all-news outlet, KNX. No Los Angeles major media - including television, radio, or newspapers - are owned by companies headquartered in Los Angeles. Even the Los Angeles Times, edited by Baltimore's John Carroll, is owned by the Chicago-based Tribune Co. It is remarkable how hard so many of these media outlets are fighting against secession even though they have no real stake in the battle.

I took the microphone to point out that the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce is in a city-owned CRA building and desperately trying to defend the money-losing Trizec-Hahn project, Hollywood & Highland, that got $75 million from the CRA .It is having trouble paying it off after shoppers abandoned it in droves to due to extremely high parking rates . The chamber wants to control the sidewalks of Hollywood that belong to its residents, and it is sure to find its absolute power diminished when the new City of Hollywood replaces "Honorary Mayor Johnny Grant" with a real mayor who enjoys a broad mandate for meaningful change.

Jimenez, at the close of the conference, took pains to point out the handprints in the sidewalk in front of the Johnny Grant Building, a la those at the Grauman's Chinese Theater across the street, and to say that he thought Grant is "a great man."

Now, in abandoning the small businesses that would vastly benefit from being stakeholders in the most famous city in the world, the chamber's and its Walk of Fame spokesman is assisting in their betrayal, Jimenez said.

Grant was the first to sign the Hollywood cityhood petition, reaping acres of free publicity, and then publicly turned his back on it this spring after California's Local Area Formation Commission voted 6-to-2 to find the new city viable and to put it on the ballot for Nov. 5.

FLASH!!!
HOLLYWOOD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OPPOSES SECESSION!

The Hollywood Independence Forum has just received exclusive word that the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has come out in opposition to the existence of a new City Of Hollywood.

The Chamber, racked by financial scandals in recent years and widely criticized for allowing its biggest asset, the Hollywood Sign, to deteriorate, has already lost some key members, who will destroy their membership cards today at news conference at 4pm in front of the Community Redevelopment Agency's Johnny Grant Building next to the Roosevelt Hotel.

Grant was the first to sign the cityhood petition when it was circulated last year, but was reportedly pressured by city officials to back off his support or lose his luxurious suite at the Hollywood Roosevelt that comes with his high-profile "Honorary Mayor of Hollywood" status. Grant, a resident of Toluca Lake, won headlines when he turned his back on the Hollwyood cityhood movement earlier this year..

I will also be attending the press conference called by the Hollywood Indpendence as publisher and producer of the Hollywood Independence Forum and a candidate for the Hollywood City Council.

WELCOME TO THE HOLLYWOOD INDEPENDENCE BLOG

Welcome to the newest blog on the Hollywood cityhood movement. We will be a source of news, views and reviews for the greater Los Angeles community about the new City of Hollywood, which would be created by voters who support Measure H on the Nov. 5, 2002, Los Angeles ballot.

In addition to this blog, a new cable access show, Hollywood Independence Forum, hosted by award-winning New Times columnist Jill Stewart, will also address such questions and introduce candidates for the Hollywood City Council. Dates of the airing will be available here after Sept. 7. So far, six candidates have agreed to take part in the HIF cable show, including Hollywood VOTE founder Gene LaPietra, the founder of this blog, Joe Shea, Bradbury city manager Ed Dilkes, entertainment attorney Michael Ackerman, architect and homeowner association leader Paul Ramsey, and businessman Gary Sinnanian. Also invited are Ramada Inn owner Jeff Zarrinnam, film director Tad Davis, Neighborhood Council leader Rosa Martinez, LA County HIV/AIDS Commissioner Richard Eastman and Thai newspaper publisher Pat Sripitat. Their wide-ranging discussion of issues posed by a studio audience will explore many facets of what soon may be the most famous city in the world.

Is a new City of Hollywood good for seniors? For kids? Will it improve the schools? Will taxes go up or go down? Is rent control safe? Who will police it? Who is leading it? All these and many more questions are the appropriate topics of the Hollywood Independence Forum. Welcome!