Sunday, January 25, 2009

The LA Times Has No Idea Where Glendale Is

Two articles in Sunday's LA Times Business section misidentified locations as being in Glendale.  The first error is in "Man, What A Bargain", about finding quality men's clothes in thrift stores:
But I recently scored that herringbone Brooks Brothers suit for $12.95 at the Goodwill on Fairfax, and a J. Press chalk pinstripe for $29.95 at Out of the Closet in Glendale. If I didn't admit these facts in print, none would be the wiser.
Of course, Glendale doesn't have an Out of the Closet location - the author is presumably referring to the Glendale BOULEVARD Out of the Closet in Atwater Village, which is in Los Angeles.

The second error is in David Lazarus's column about having his credit cards and identity fraudulently used after his wallet was stolen from his gym locker.
The thief then jumped into his car and high-tailed it to Glendale, where, shortly after 2:30 p.m., he used my American Express card for a $1,350.80 purchase at Best Buy.

Tim Fisher, Best Buy's director of loss prevention, said the thief bought an Apple laptop. He said security tapes showed a tall, white man who was "large in frame, athletic in nature."

The thief next drove to a Toys R Us in Glendale, where this time he used my Bank of America debit card to buy $497.98 worth of stuff. Then, with considerable moxie, he returned to the same Best Buy where he'd been a half-hour earlier and used my Chase card to buy a Canon digital camera for $1,298.97.
There isn't a Best Buy or Toys R Us within Glendale city limits.  Again, The Times is referring to Atwater Village, which is clearly in Los Angeles.  As much as I'd love for Glendale to annex Atwater Village, it hasn't happened yet!

The Times is currently working on a project to quantify the boundaries of every single neighborhood in the region - maybe they'll take a look at a map of Glendale next.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude. Shut it.

This has NOTHING to do with the LAT not knowing what's up with Glendale and EVERYTHING to do with LAT and most news organizations having NO IDEA where Atwater Village is, or in many cases, that it even exists.

I'm with you on the rage part, but I think it has more to do with Atwater Village's profile, than Glendale's.

Anyway...I like it here. Keep it up.

Scott said...

I went with a Glendale oriented headline, but a more accurate headline would indeed be "LAT Has No Idea Where Atwater Village Is".

"Los Angeles Times Can't Find Los Angeles On A Map" also has a nice ring to it.

T said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
T said...

Actually, this may have more to do with the fact that the Times defines its own neighborhood boundaries.

via curbedLA: http://la.curbed.com/archives/2009/01/los_angeles_times_will_do_the_unthinkable.php

Anonymous said...

Actually, we got a pretty good laugh out of the Lazarus article since the Best Buy is pretty much next door to the Toys R Us on Los Feliz, so we seriously doubt that the thief "drove" from one to the other. Guess you can't expect too much research or in-house knowledge given all the lay-offs at the Times.

AVN said...

LAT doesn't have to know a thing about Atwater Village or any of the other 160+ neighborhoods. It's not the Atwater Village Times, after all. But you'd think they'd know where the Los Angeles city limits are. There are signs. And it's in the freeking name of the paper.

- AVN

Gerard said...

Part of the confusion may be that Best Buy itself refers to the Atwater Village location as the Glendale store. Check out the Store Locator at bestbuy.com.