ink&paper A short film about the last paper shop, and the last letterpress, in Los Angeles.
"There are days go by that there can be absolutely no business at all."
posted by OmieWise
on Dec 21, 2011 -
22 comments
You may have heard about
Romeo Agents, the male employees of the East German
Ministry for State Security (also known as MfS or Stasi). They were unleashed on female federal employees in West Germany, with whom they began long-term relations and then began using as sources.
That tactic has apparently been used in the United States as well; David Cay Johnston writes about
the real legacy of Daryl Gates, the former chief of the LAPD. Gates died Friday.
[more inside]
posted by krautland
on Apr 17, 2010 -
38 comments
The Donald Sterling Rule "Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling lives by his own rules. And the only one that matters, apparently, is this:
all bad deeds go unpunished. Over the last six years, nearly two dozen L.A. residents have sued Sterling for engaging in racist housing practices and Jim Crow-style bigotry. In a 2003 deposition, the 76-year-old real estate mogul admitted to paying a former employee to have sex with him in an elevator. Three years ago, the U.S. government charged him with "willful" mistreatment of African-American and Latino tenants, and earlier this month, he agreed to pay the Dept. of Justice nearly $3 million to settle a federal racial-discrimination housing lawsuit, the largest award ever for a case of its kind." So why, asks California's
Tenants Together,
has the NBA said nothing about Sterling's less than sterling behavior?
[more inside]
posted by ocherdraco
on Nov 27, 2009 -
27 comments
Extra! Tabloid photographs from the Los Angeles Herald Express (1936-1961), showing
celebrities,
fashion,
tragedy,
(early) CHiPs, and
babes with guns.
Via the
Virtual Gallery at the LA Public Library, which has many other fine exhibits, such as
California in the 20s, the
1932 Olympics,
celebrity golf, and a wonderful collection from the
golden age of travel posters.
posted by Gamblor
on Jul 28, 2006 -
15 comments
The Jackie Robinson of architecture. An orphaned African American boy from downtown Los Angeles,
Paul Revere Williams wanted to be an architect, and when he mentioned his career goal the high school guidance counselor ”stared at me with as much astonishment as he would have had I proposed a rocket flight to Mars...
Whoever heard of a Negro being an architect?”. Therefore, Williams learned to read and draw upside down -- he knew that white clients would not sit next to him --
graduated from USC and in 1924 became the first certified African American architect west of the Mississippi. In a
50-year long extraordinary career, he designed landmarks like the
Theme restaurant at
Los Angeles International Airport (with
Welton Becket), the
LA County Courthouse, the
Hollywood YMCA,
Saks Fifth Avenue in
Beverly Hills, restored the Beverly Hills Hotel. Some of his most interesting buildings, like the
La Concha Motel in
Las Vegas have either been
razed to the
ground or, like the "
Batman house", aka
160 S San Rafael mansion in Pasadena, have been destroyed by fire. Now, Williams' historic
Morris Landau House has been
cut into 21 separate pieces and sits in a Santa Clarita storage yard,
rotting away. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Jul 2, 2006 -
25 comments
What’s a dog worth? Los Angeles kills more animals in its shelters than any other metropolitan area in the United States. For that to change, we will have to figure out what to do with the pets none of us want.
posted by PenguinBukkake
on May 13, 2006 -
56 comments
Rivers of Light Hypnotic night-time helicopter shots, floating over downtown LA offices and highways. From Grass Collective. Flash interface, so find your way to the fifth column from the left ('free downloads').
[Large (91MB, 146MB) zipped QT files - a smaller (12MB) sample here]
posted by carter
on Mar 23, 2006 -
12 comments
I first read "Ask the Dust" in 1971 when I was doing research for "Chinatown". I was concerned about the way people really sounded when they talked, and I was dissatisfied with everything else I had read that was written during the '30s. I wanted the real thing, as Henry James would say. When I picked up Fante's "Ask the Dust," I just knew that was the way those kids talked to each other—the rhythms, cadences, racism.
Robert Towne on
adapting John Fante's novel
for the big screen. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Mar 4, 2006 -
17 comments
"I haven't been in a concert hall in 4 billion years". Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, 54, had been excited about an invitation to see the
Los Angeles Philharmonic in action at
Disney Hall. "The anticipation is horrible". He'd started showering daily at a shelter, to gussy himself up as much as possible. Nathaniel was a music student more than 30 years ago at the
Juilliard School when he suffered a breakdown. Today, as he continues to battle the schizophrenia that landed him on skid row, he plays violin and cello for hours each day in downtown Los Angeles, lifting his instruments out of an orange shopping cart on which he has written: "Little Walt Disney Concert Hall — Beethoven." After the Philharmonic's rehearsal, Ayers has played Disney Hall -- the real one, this time. Without the bow at first, picking the strings with his right hand, Bach's Cello Suite No. 1: Prelude. Several Philharmonic staffers heard the music and wandered over, peering in to see a man of the streets, tattered and elegant, close his eyes and drift into ecstasy.
posted by PenguinBukkake
on Oct 9, 2005 -
14 comments
The most modern home built in the world. "From the outside it looks
like a spaceship you cannot enter. But if you go inside, it feels very cozy… very Zen and calming. Maybe because you are
floating above the city, in the sky".
John Lautner's
Chemosphere residence is the product of a
fortuitous union of architect, client, time and place.
Leonard Malin was a young aerospace engineer in late-1950s L.A. whose father-in-law had just given him a plot north of Mulholland Drive, near Laurel Canyon. The only catch: at roughly 45 degrees, the slope was all but unbuildable. Lautner sketched a bold vertical line, a cross, and a curve above it. "Draw it up," he told his assistant.
Now publisher
Benedikt Taschen owns Chemosphere (NSFW), and after 20 years of neglect the house has been beautifully
restored (.pdf) by
Frank Escher.
posted by matteo
on Apr 7, 2005 -
24 comments
"Hubert Selby died often. But he always came back, smiling that beautiful smile of his, and those blue eyes of his... This time he will not be back. My saints have always come from hell, and now, with his passing, there are no more saints".
Selby is the author of
Last Exit to Brooklyn, (
tried for obscenity in England and supported by, among many others, Samuel Beckett and Anthony Burgess),
Requiem For a Dream,
Song of the Silent Snow. He is being
eulogized in the USA and UK, but also, massively (I've just watched a fantastic TV special) in France, where he is much more popular than in his native land (Selby's death was the cover story -- plus pages 2, 3 and 4 -- in the daily Libération today --
.pdf file):
Dernière sortie vers la rédemption,
L'extase de la dévastation. What makes all this kind of ironic -- in a very Selbyesque way -- is that Selby himself used to say,
"I started to die 36 hours before I was born..." (more inside)
posted by matteo
on Apr 28, 2004 -
16 comments
Labor Unions in a free market.
Southern California is being gripped by crippling strikes by
transit workers and
grocery clerks -- both over health care -- that has stranded thousands of mostly poor commuters across Los Angeles and is expected to sap millions from the local economy.
As a person who can't drive due to a visual disability, I am personally effected by the MTA transit strike (that is rumored may last several months). State employees are not allowed to strike. Shouldn't that also be the case for essential services, such as public transit?
posted by lola
on Oct 14, 2003 -
80 comments
The Los Angeles Times goes multimedia. For the past few weeks, the LA Times has begun a significant push into offering video, audio, and interactive Flash on their website. One of the most interesting aspects is that the paper has moved one step beyond simply replaying AP Television clips as many sites have done; the LA Times writers are stand before the cameras and microphones themselves and report stories in a stuttering, non-hairsprayed, introverted demeanor that I find very refreshing, though so far I have gleaned very little additional information from it. When does (or can) this mode of journalism on the web rise above gimmickry or 'just because we can' and add value to a written article? Can video/tv news rise above mere spectacle?
posted by 4easypayments
on Mar 20, 2003 -
3 comments
