ON THE WESTSIDE

cold-crushed
Ah, pity the poor rice rocket racers. Southern California police are now getting into the habit of crushing cars that they find modified with illegal/stolen parts. That seems a little bit overkill but it sounds like it's part of a zero tolerance crackdown on illegal street racing. Besides, if cops weren't putting modified Hondas in compacters, we'd never get glorious quotes like this one from 18 year old Charles Hoang whose '98 Integra got flattened:

"That's my heart, my dream. That's my girlfriend, the love of my life. The cops can crush my car, but they can't crush my memories."

Oh my, that's a rich, rich statement. Far be it for me - an L.A. boy raised on car culture - to question someone else's auto-love this kid sounds in need of a real girlfriend perhaps.

Meanwhile, up north in San Francisco: the lone Asian American member of the Board of Supervisors, Ed Jew, is under the heat lamp for alleged corruption charges. This case is drawing additional furor because Jew is a conservative in all otherwise uber-liberal city and some of his supporters are suggesting that Jew is the victim of a campaign of political purging with racist overtones. Seems like the race card here might be a bit of a stretch given the nature of the charges - that Jew lied about his residence when he filed to run and didn't actually live in the district that he now represents. That didn't stop his attorney from saying:

"I don't know if it's a Chinese thing or a political thing. Ed is conservative and follows his own drummer. But to have one supervisor ask why we had to wait for a trial — that smacks of Alabama before civil rights: Here's a rope. Let's get down to business."

The editor of the Sing Tao Daily gives statements like that the eye-roll:

"Ed Jew's friends are a small group trying to grab the media attention in his defense. The silent majority think that Ed Jew is stupid. There's something wrong with a politician who won't admit wrongdoing. Eventually, he will have to pay his own price. It has nothing to do with the Chinese community."

--O.W.