Firehose #128: Wipeout

Also: You can help just by reading and listening!

This picture, from June 2023, is of my youngest daughter and one of my dearest friends, the drummer/novelist/Substacker Steve Coulter, investigating a creepy cave on the hike up to one of Steve’s favorite places on earth, the Eaton Canyon Falls. It’s hard to believe, while tromping happily through the shade-covered creek, that a pretty much unbroken sun-blasted megalopolis of 15 million people lies just one mile away. Later that afternoon, enjoying beverages in his Altadena backyard, Steve proudly showed off his stormwater swale and drought-resistant garden, and regaled us with the local lore that comes from living against the mountains: bears invading hot tubs, coyotes stalking cats, and the never-ending SoCal toggle between drought and flood, rain and fire.

This is what Coulter’s house looks like today:

Here’s the nearby house of his (and our) longtime friend and bass player, the other half of one of the best lesser-known rhythm sections in rock, Jeff Solomon:

I talked about both of those guys, who are just two of who knows how many thousands of shell-shocked California homeowners, on Episode #485. Coulter wrote about it today on his Remember the Lightning Substack, in a harrowing piece that among other things speaks frankly about how hard it is to hold onto long-fought sobriety at a moment like this. Another friend & former guest, Meghan Daum (#157), also lost her house in Altadena, which she talked about here, and podcasted about with the Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em gals.

We have in this space previously encouraged you sweet people to help out various fundraising efforts for our loved ones and community members in need, and I really do not wish to wear out that button. In fact, one of the ways that you can best provide comfort without touching any GoFundMe page is to simply (and with my enthusiastic recommendation!) consume some of the beautiful culture these people have created.

In the Coulter/Solomon case, their work with Tsar, Ken Layne & the Corvids, The Brothers Steve, and even some of my unreleased crapola … including, now that I think of it, a song written in the wake of the deadly October 2003 fires.

Under the pen name S.W. Lauden, Coulter has that aforementioned Substack about Power Pop where you can find (and follow the links on) a bio that includes: “editor of the essay collections Go All The Way: A Literary Appreciation of Power Pop and Forbidden Beat: Perspectives on Punk Drumming. His power pop-themed crime fiction novellas include That'll Be The Day: A Power Pop Heist and Good Girls Don't. He is also the author of the Greg Salem punk rock PI trilogy, starting with Bad Citizen Corporation.” Meghan Daum is proprietrix of The Unspeakable, which combines podcast, writing, and lady-stuff; she is also “author of six books, most recently The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through The New Culture Wars.”

And yes, for those wishing to help extra, there are GoFundMe pages for both the Coulters and the Solomons. Will share if Meghan also goes that route.

* Friday afternoon Reason piece from me: “Fires Incinerated the Facade of California Governing Competence: Virtue-signaling is no substitute for disaster preparedness.” Excerpt:

People gobsmacked by empty fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades have wondered, why not just stick a hose in the ocean? Well, salt water can be very damaging to equipment (including firefighting machinery) and all sorts of other things as well, so the Pacific's bounty can only be used against conflagrations sparingly. But desalinated water sure could have come in handy this week.

How many coastal desalination plants are there between Santa Barbara and San Diego counties? Zero.

California voters in 2014 passed Proposition 1, the Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act, which authorized $7.12 billion in bond issues; it's one of eight water-related bond-issue propositions passed so far in the 21st century. A full $2.7 billion of Prop. 1 was earmarked for "new water storage" projects, to do stuff like capture more snowmelt and rainwater in the state's sporadic heavy-precipitation winters (such as 2022–23 and 2023–24).

So how many of those water storage projects have been built? Zero.

Some previous writings on the subject: “The Unintended Consequences of Subsidized Fire Insurance” (2009), “At What Price Is Saving a House, When the Savior Might Break the No-Siren Rule?” (2008), “Burn the Rich” (2007), and “UnFAIR” (2003).

* Wednesday morning, about 24 hours into the destruction, we made our monthly appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show, where we discussed fire-preparedness, class-war reaction, plus the Zuckerbergian vibe-shift, demise of fact-checking, and Kmele’s Greenland-acquisition fantasties. Whole thing:

* Seems like ages ago, but I published another Reason piece this past week, pursuant to some of the conversation on Members Only #243: “Top-Down Political Cowardice Helped Make Charlie Hebdo a Lonely Target: From Jimmy Carter to Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama to John Kerry, politicians have led the abandonment of free speech.” Excerpt:

In 2012—before the massacre, but after the 2011 firebombing in response to a Muhammad cover—then–White House press secretary Jay Carney reacted to news of more Charlie Hebdo caricaturing by saying, "Obviously, we have questions about the judgment of publishing something like this. We know that these images will be deeply offensive to many and have the potential to be inflammatory."

In October 2015, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified to Congress that Charlie Hebdo's cartoons "sparked" the murderous violence against it, an inapt metaphor (the word you are looking for is kindling) whose moral rot can perhaps be best detected by substituting assassination for rape, cartoon content for skirt length.

One month later, after the Islamicist massacre of 129 concertgoers at the Bataclan in Paris, then–Secretary of State John Kerry asserted: "There's something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that. There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of—not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, 'OK, they're really angry because of this and that.' This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate."

The most insistent Democratic blame on content creators for far-flung violence came with the September 11, 2012, killing of four U.S. servicemen in Benghazi, Libya, which the administration serially claimed was "sparked" by a straight-to-YouTube video called Innocence of Muslims shot by some rando in Cerritos, California.

* I appeared this week on The Karol Markowicz Show, where I talked about “libertarianism, the evolution of journalism, the impact of educational policies in Brooklyn, the decline of public trust in institutions…. and the broader societal shifts that have occurred since 9/11.” But mostly, about why you should put the cap back on the toothpaste.

* Chat of the Week comes from Tommy:

I’m feeling persuaded by Moynihan Justice these days. I live in Altadena and my house is one of the maybe 20% remaining in the area. We are displaced due to no power. Looters are really out there. The National Guard is supposedly out guarding but my wife reports:

I went back to the house and the water is back, I watered everything. I talked with ryan [neighbor] and he told me there were two guys trying to get into our house yesterday. He caught them at the Fence and tased one of them. They ran off and could not get into our house.

He also said that at the corner of Woodbury and Catalina, a guy was arrested. He was in a big white truck cop pulled him over and then three other cops surrounded him, they caught him with three charred safes.

I’m so thankful for my badass vigilant(e) neighbors. We’ve been bringing them food and water as they stake out on the block.

Walkoff music on this heavy week is one of my very favorite Coulter/Solomon contributions to the culture. See you paying subscribers at Second Sunday!