Stecyk defined Southern California’s subversive, skateboard aesthetic and changed art and culture in the process, but that doesn’t mean he wants to talk about it.
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Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
Old Dudes On Skateboards
The death of his life-long skateboarding friend prompts Aaron Gilbreath to get back on his board — at 44, with his toddler daughter in tow.
Posted inNonfiction
It’s Like That: The Makings of a Hip-Hop Writer
Hip-hop was a different kind of music that needed a different kind of writer to cover it. This is how Michael A. Gonzales came of age in a time when Black writers began breaking the white ceiling.
Posted inBooks, Culture, Nonfiction, Story
A Childhood in Cars
How one young man cut against the grain of American masculinity and freed himself from car culture.
Posted inNonfiction
The Case for Letting Malibu Burn
Many of California’s native ecosystems evolved to burn. Modern fire suppression creates fuels that lead to catastrophic fires. So why do people insist on rebuilding in the firebelt?
Posted inArts & Culture, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
Where Have All the Music Magazines Gone?
Inside music journalism post-2008 recession, and how media consumption in the 21st century offers a road map for the continuation of the once-robust medium.
Posted inNonfiction
When ‘The Real World’ Gave Up on Reality
The true story of the exact moment in the mid-Nineties when reality television morphed from its best self to its worst.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story, Unapologetic Women, Writing
Lyrical Ladies, Writing Women, and the Legend of Lauryn Hill
Joan Morgan’s “She Begat This” looks back at how Lauryn Hill crashed through hip-hop’s glass ceiling, while our critic looks at how the author and a cadre of black women writers did the same for hip-hop music journalism.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The 30-Foot Jump
Anyway, the record will probably be Mike Powell’s for many years to come because, like I say, we just don’t jump like we used to. Nobody in years has jumped close enough that the NFL chain gang would even bother to come out and measure. The longest jump of 2010 wasn’t even 28 feet. And […]
Posted inUncategorized
How did the 1970s and Los Angeles end up creating such idiosyncratic singer-songwriters as Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson and Van Dyke Parks? The first thing you should know about Harry Nilsson is that he won a Grammy for covering a schmaltzy Badfinger ballad called ‘Without You’ in 1971. The second thing you should know is […]
