Remember way, way, way back when this I, Anonymous ran in June?
Jesus Christ, Leverage! How many fucking parking spots does your crew need to take out of downtown lots to film your piece of shit sorry excuse for a third-rate cable network void of a fucking show? I rarely drive to work, but when I do I expect at least one spot to be open in a two-mile radius of Old Town. What the fuck is your problem? Does each person on staff drive five cars to work? If you’re going to take our lots, pay for our street parking and the tickets we’re bound to get when we forget to feed the meter every 90 minutes. Or maybe you could do what the rest of us do and take the first spot available. And fuck you to the lot owners that exiled local business employees to street parking. Closing off a good 20 spots to make room for a catering area for these fuck necks? Are you fucking serious? I’ve only met one person who actually watches Leverage and he’s a fucking idiot.—Anonymous
Well! Apparently word was carried (on the back of a sloth, presumably) to the producers of the show, leading us to this retort just in from one of the show’s honchos. (He or she mailed it to the anonymous address so I’m not gonna say who, but let’s just say they’re key.)
LEVERAGE, INDEED! To answer some of the questions posed in “Lots of Leverage” (I, Anonymous confession, dated June 4th): Where to begin? How many parking spots does the Leverage crew need to take out of downtown to film the #1 rated cable TV drama[*]? The answer to that is somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to 200, of which 90% are hard working Portland residents. I am trying to understand why the author of this confession cannot understand that the parking space for his job is [not] more important than the parking space of any other hard working Portlander. WOW, what a special person you must be. Yes, Leverage stops by downtown Portland on occasion and gobbles up some precious parking real estate, but it is for maybe 15 days in a year and in doing so spends millions of dollars in Portland’s downtown economy. How come this writer didn’t expose all of the parking dedicated to the various food carts parked in almost all of our downtown lots? Or what about all of the downtown celebrations we have here in Portland? I found it so easy to explain this without dropping one single F-Bomb.
Touché?
*HOLY SHIT, is that true?? Has anyone seen it? What is it about?
I watched the first season of Leverage. It’s fun and sort of stupid. Also, the dudes are super0hot except for that old one. He’s not hot. Not hot at all.
BOOM– Roasted!
I like that Leverage puts a lot of money into our economy and it actually employs some people I know and I don’t mind it taking up parking spaces…but even the people I know that work on the show make fun of how bad it is.
Preface: I like “Leverage”, it’s a fun show to watch (but don’t begin to take it seriously), and I hope they continue to shoot around town and showcase various parts of the city. Dressing up the Schnitz as the capital of a banana-republic on the edge of revolution was priceless.
However, it has been my experience that Leverage occasionally blocks off more street space than they need, for longer than they need. At least early on, I don’t know how it has been in the most recent production cycle.
Back in the spring of 2009, I rented a studio space downtown for my own productions. As luck would have it, on the weekend I was moving in, the Leverage team had reserved parking along streets surrounding my building for 3 or 4 days, making it impossible to access the loading zone for our building, or to park anywhere that didn’t require moving heavy items distances up to 600ft to reach the freight entrance. The spots remained empty most of the time, even for entire days.
I wrote a very polite letter to the Leverage folks back at the time, no F-bombs whatsoever, and even offered them access to my 3rd-floor studio and the roof of the 5-floor building, which had excellent views of the streets they were going to film. Never heard back so much as a peep.
So, should anyone from the Leverage team be reading this: Please don’t sweat the h8ers, but please do try to be a tad more proactive when someone contacts you with a genuine complaint.
(And my studio is now in SE Portland near some lovely railroad tracks, if you ever want to film in the vicinity, drop me a line.)
200 parking spaces? So presumably no one lives downtown, takes the MAX, bikes or carpools. Locals! Pfft!
Of course, what this really comes down to is, LEVERAGE-PRODUCER-YOU-ARE-NOT-JOSS-WHEDON-SO-WE-JUST-DON’T-CARE.
If Leverage is the #1 cable tv drama, it shows two things:
1. Cable tv REALLY SUCKS.
2. People that watch cable tv must be REALLY STUPID.
I’m an East-sider and have never been inconvenienced by Leverage. But having worked on some film & TV projects, Bob R, I know that it is not uncommon for crews to reserve spaces and access to space just to keep a little buffer zone around the area they’re filming so as to keep on schedule and not have to halt production while you stop by to park your Honda Civic and rubberneck for a bit. They need the space, but not necessarily for parking.
I too have friends who work on the thing, and feel that it is stupid.
What’s it about? Well, it’s not an especially original premise, and despite so many recognizably Portland locations being in it, it’s supposed to take place in Boston.
Rich Bachelor: “and despite so many recognizably Portland locations being in it, it’s supposed to take place in Boston”
True, but they did do an episode based around an entirely fictional town and really let all the Portland landmarks shine, including City Hall and the Fremont Bridge.
Sisya: “Bob R, I know that it is not uncommon for crews to reserve spaces and access to space just to keep a little buffer zone around the area they’re filming”
I fully understand that (although many Leverage shoots are designed so regular passers-by can walk right on through, which is nice)… My contention here is not that they didn’t have the right to reserve the street for when they were filming (and buffers for timing and space) but that, during they unused times, they should have at least had a production assistant handy to assist local business owners (like me) to access their own loading zones! This was not merely a question of parking convenience, this was a question of practical access to a building’s freight entrance.
I didn’t want to have too lengthy of a comment originally, but I’ll add that a couple of days into this, people started disregarding the signs and barricades and started parking on that street anyway, and nobody from Leverage dropped by to complain or redirect.
Portlanders still drive downtown to work? It’s obvious we haven’t done enough to stop this type of behavior.
According to an article I found, Leverage was recently “ad-supported cable’s #1 drama for the week among adults 18-49.” So someone left quite a few words out of that description.
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/01/2…
I find it a little depressing when Portland and its landmarks get passed off as a fictional town. Nobody recognizes us 🙁
Hey, at least we have Portlandia. Hah. And “find the first parking spot like the rest of us?” Well, no one I know that works downtown is stupid enough to drive.
I have to agree with you here, I don’t get why people are still allowing themselves to be treated thusly by their cable company…you are paying THEM. Don’t take this abuse people! Do what I did…four years ago I was just about ready to pull my hair out from frustration over the high-prices and constant billing error on behalf of my cable company and I just cancelled the service and went to satellite. I’ve been with DISH Network ever since, and couldn’t be happier. I’ve recommended their service to several friends and family members (something I wouldn’t have done to an enemy with Cable) and this bias for DISH comes not from the fact that I’ve worked at one of their call centers for the last year, but that I’ve been an extremely happy customer for the last four! The selection is awesome, the prices are low, their customer service is award winning. The only thing that upsets me is that I waited so long to make the switch!
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