Being green isn’t just a social statement for Century City attorney Brad Cohen – it’s also a business generator. Cohen is one of 500 U.S. residents BMW selected to test the yet-to-be-released electric Mini Cooper, known as the Mini E. Although the Mini E looks like a standard Mini except for electrical components filling the back seat space, Cohen was still spotted by a fellow Mini E test driver one day last month.
“He rolled down the window and asked if I could stop and talk for a second,” said Cohen, 56, a partner at Venable LLP who specializes in tax planning and real estate transactions. “He turned out to be the general counsel at New Wave Entertainment, so I was schmoozing with him for work.”
And Cohen’s greenness doesn’t just connect him with prospective clients; it also makes him the star of his neighborhood. That’s because the roof of his house in Little Holmby, a community near Westwood, is covered with solar panels.
“We met some of our neighbors, and they were inquiring about where we live and they said, ‘You guys are the people with the solar panels,’” Cohen said. “It was a validation that we made the right decision, and we already inspired some of our neighbors.”
Hidden Towers
While many collect shot glasses or pins of their travels, Jonathan Kramer prefers to take pictures of cell phone towers.
“I think it’s pretty amazing to see how places all over the world mask them,” said Kramer, head of the telecommunications law firm Kramer.Firm Inc. in West Los Angeles. “I just started taking them 15 years ago when I noticed how some places hide them in ornate towers or camouflage them into the walls.”
Kramer, 54, has taken photos of about 3,500 cell phone towers – atop buildings or on the side of roads – from throughout the Southwest to the hills of England and parts of Africa.
He has amassed an online gallery of tower photos at his firm’s Web site, and even puts them to practical use, occasionally showing them to city planners who ask for advice on how they can mask the distracting antenna-clad structures.
One of Kramer’s favorite hidden cell phone towers in the Los Angeles area is on the Ronald Reagan (118) Freeway at the east end of the Santa Susana Pass between the Simi and San Fernando valleys, where a number of cell providers hid their antennas in realistic fake boulders.
And he’s gotten published, too: A few of his photos were featured in a spread called “Cell Phonies” in National Geographic magazine a few years ago – not bad for the former engineer-turned-attorney.
“It’s great when a labor of love actually brings something unexpected and helpful for your day job,” Kramer said.
Staff reporters Alexa Hyland and Francisco Vara-Orta contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].
