The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 47

Cos Atigclcs (Times MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1987 CCyPart IV In Hong Kong, Industry Pirates Go High Tech American Software Is Copied, Sold Openly in Golden Shopping Arcade it jj ttttat AfMBW Sa ItlffltlMM ff; WtW scl fas-frS HSEgzjg nr iH 3' II I ST- j0jfi jF-'" RICK MEYER Los Angeles Times DOWNTOWN'S WES BANK Developers' Bet on 'Wrong Side' of Harbor Freeway Is Paying Off By VICTOR F.ZONANA, Times Staff Writer HONG KONG-This bustling port's poor, out-of-the-way Sham Shu'i Po district is an unlikely site for a tourist attraction. Teeming tenements line fetid streets. A shirtless youth and a wriggling snake star in a grotesque street corner dance. Yet each day, hundreds of visitors brave the squalor in search of one of Hong Kong's biggest and most illicit bargains. They do not come to see the snake man.

They come to see the pirates. For Sham Shui Po's Golden Shopping Arcade is the world's most notorious emporium for pirated or illegally copiedpersonal computer software. Larcenous computer enthusiasts from around the world flock here to cart off armloads of the stuff, paying pennies on the dollar for the latest programs. Lotus 1-2-3, the leading spreadsheet program, can be had for as little as $13 including a bound, professionally printed manual. WordPerfect, the top-selling word processing package, goes for $10.

The programs list for $495 in the United States. "You can get anything there," says an American expatriate and technology junkie whose latest fix was a $17 copy of Ventura Publisher, a state-of-the-art desktop publishing package. "I feel bad every time I use it," he confesses, "but at these prices it's hard to resist." Forget about phony Rolex watches and Please see PIRATES, Page 4 Region's Farmers Being Weeded Out by Urbanization By BRUCE KEPPEL, Times Staff Writer As he approaches age 60, after a lifetime of farming, John Alesso is thinking of subdividing 420 acres that he owns between Interstate 5 and Highway 14 near the Kern County border for development into "an equestrian community" of five-acre estates. Not only will the proceeds provide retirement income, he says, but his new neighbors would become customers for the alfalfa hay and vegetable crops that he expects to continue producing in the upper Antelope Valley. "There'll always be some agriculture here in Los Angeles County," Alesso predicts, "some small horse ranches and some alfalfa grown to supply them, but we won't see agriculture as we've known it." Alesso is hardly alone among farmers caught in the urbanized or rapidly urbanizing Southern California counties.

Since World War II, population pressures and rising land and water costs have forced Please see FARMERS, Page 2 INSIDE No Yen to Invest The Japanese were unimpressed by the U.S. budget accord and don't expect to return to Wall Street soon. 2 Room Service Hoteliers are anxious to take advantage of an expected boom in tourism in China. 3 Monday Report Watch companies have decided that making fashion statements can improve their financial statements as well. 5 The Numbers Southland Stocks Bankruptcy Trends seven acres at the Thomas Cadillac site.

"It's a hot area." But there are also worries about where displaced low-income residents will live, whether West Bank growth will steal development from the east side, and how the crisscross of narrow streets will handle greatly increased traffic. To answer those questions, the area's major landowners and the city recently began working on a comprehensive land use and transportation plan for the nearly 400-acre zone. It would, among other things, require builders to pay a fee for every commuter their projects bring to the West Bank. If the plan is successful, participants say, the West Bank area could become a model of a development that could satisfy some of the concerns of the slow -growth movement as well as the needs of the city. "I think we have the ability to create a good urban environment that is a livable environment that will establish us as the next growth area of downtown Los Angeles," said Ken Chang, spokesman for Crown Hill Development, a California corporation controlled by Asian interests that plans a large mixed-used project on its nine-acre parcel.

"What we want to do Please see GAMBLE, Page 9 subsidiary. It's a "natural extension," he says, of what has been happening across the freeway. Indeed, that broad stretch of meandering streets, deteriorating housing and sporadic office development west of the freeway finally is emerging as part of downtown Los Angeles but not without great problems and some skepticism. In the last few years, as the financial district has boomed, half a dozen new high-rise office buildings have leaped the freeway to an area that goes by many names such as the bureaucratic "Central City West," the historic "Crown Hill," the more tony "West Bank" and even, in the words of one large landholder, "Across the Great Divide." There is new talk of hotels, housing, retail space and millions of square feet of offices ahead for the area. "All of a sudden, the freeway that used to be a barrier is now seen as a river," said R.

Kevin Ketchum, real estate director for Thomas Investments, which owns the Developers say the district west of the Harbor Freeway is a 'hot Jim! "HOLL I ))-. 5LMPIC BIVO. r. zr 1. Beaudry Center 2.

Unocal 3. Good Samaritan Hospital 4. Wilshire-Bixel building 5. WCT building 6. Coopers Lybrand 7.

Pacific Telesis 8. Transpacific Center 9. Thomas Cadillac synagogue. They ordered the goods from wholesalers and were assembling the kits in durable plastic tool chests on Oct. 1, when the Richter scale provided them with new sales incentive.

The $125 kits for a family of four can be ordered by writing P.O. Box 7323, Beverly Hills, CA 90212. There also smaller kits to put in your car or office. It's Not Fit to Print These days just about anybody with access to a personal computer can put together professional-looking newsletters, flyers and even books. At least that's what boosters of so-called desktop publishing like to say.

Don't believe it, say the design professionals. Design Access a San Francisco firm specializing in electronic publishing, says the new technology has spawned so many "graphically atrocious" and "aesthetically impaired" documents that the firm is sponsoring a "Bad Art" contest. "Just because you give someone a paintbrush doesn't mean he can paint, says President Bruce Ryon. Contest categories include worst layout, worst use of color, worst use of fonts and most graphic elements in a single design. 5 3RD ST.

I LS 3j II 111 MJUU FOOTNOTES By NANCY RIVERA BROOKS, Times Staff Writer The skeleton of steel rising beside the Harbor Freeway in downtown Los Angeles represents something of a gamble for developer Shurl Curci. For one thing, the Transpacific Center is a "spec" venture developer jargon for a speculative structure without a major tenant lined up before construction. And the 33-story building is going up just west of the Harbor Freeway. For decades, a few large corporate residents such as Unocal and Thomas Cadillac were lonely outposts on the west side of the freeway, an area once considered the wrong side of the tracks for development even though skyscrapers were popping up only a few blocks east. Curci's $170-million gamble seems to be paying off.

Transpacific Center, which will be finished late next year, is 46 leased, most of it to an Atlantic Richfield For Sedentary 7-Year-Olds Once upon a time, in neighborhoods not so very far away, little boys and girls used to exercise by madly racing tricycles and bicycles up driveways, down sidewalks, and across streets. Now comes the exercycle for children aged 4 to 10. Made by Apparent Inc. of Grass Valley, the 85-pound Kidcyclc includes a multicolored, computerized display board with a timer, odometer and a row of lights that flash from left to right as youngsters pedal. Dyke DeWitt, the company's co-founder, said he dreamed up the a sad day for the American free-enterprise system." What, No Chopped Liver? Here's a little riddle for Southern Californians: What contains lollipops, Mylar blankets, suntan lotion, a can opener, a first-aid kit and a packet of chicken soup mix? A picnic basket.

No, it's an earthquake survival kit. More specifically, the Jewish Mother's Earthquake Survival Kit. The kit also contains many other items deemed vital for surviving the aftermath of "the Big One." It's the brainstorm of two Los Angeles women, Karen Schwartz and Sissy Taran, who came up with the idea last summer while helping "earthquake-proof" a West L. A. invention when his own children kept trying to use the adult exercycles at a Colorado fitness club he owned and that it is aimed at health clubs and hotels.

In the three months since the product's launching, the company says it has shipped about 125. The price: $1,250. 'Happy Hour' Running Out Is it last call for unrestricted "happy hours" in California? At least 15 states have already limited the drink promotions, some even banning them. The state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control is preparing to crack down here. In hearings this year, the ABC heard about marketing gimmicks that "promote the overconsumption of alcoholic beverages," including timed drinking contests and 4-for-the-price-of-l drinks.

An ABC report, now being printed, concludes that the ABC has the power to "spell out what is and what is not" an acceptable "happy hour," said Manuel Espinosa, one of the report's authors. That prospect may not go over with some lounge owners, according to Beverage Bulletin, a Los Angeles trade journal, which editorialized recently! "Whatever they come up with will signal Index Foreign Additional OTC New Issues Municipal Bonds..