Mayor McCheese

Mayor Sam links to a City News Bureau story posted on the KCBS website about the 1,390 Polaroid photos Mayor Villaraigosa took Thursday with city employees.

The pics were taken in front of the red and gold decorated Christmas tree at the center of City Hall's third-floor rotunda:

For a majority of the city's employees, this was their first encounter with Villaraigosa, who took office July 1.

"This is the first time I'm going to meet him, and it might be my only time until next year," said Amy Navarro, a public works employee for 19 years.

The photo-op tradition started in 1973, when Mayor Tom Bradley took office.

Villaraigosa's staff started taking pictures of the mayor and city employees at 8 a.m., when the line was about 300 people deep down the third floor hallways, and didn't stop until noon.

I'm just shocked that between Mayor Sam, City News Bureau and KCBS (Darleene, I'm looking at you!), none of them came up with the "Mayor McCheese" headline. C'mon, where's the love for ironic usage of a Gen-X era Ronald McDonaldland character?


Speaking of KCBS/2, the station and sister KCAL/9 have now merged websites. Until recently, CBS 2 and KCAL maintained separate but similar-looking sites; now the Columbia Square siblings, who already share virtually everything, share the same site as well.


Coolest feature of the new site: A database of car chases, past and present. Looks like you can kill time just revisiting L.A.'s best pursuits all day long. Thanks, KCBS/KCAL! No, really.