Chris Colin

“To most outsiders, Hawai‘i is defined by the lei-draped, aloha-dispensing, honeymooner-welcoming image of the place. There’s no room for another version to emerge.”

A four-year battle over a tiny patch of river beach in Northern California Outillustrates the deep divide in how we perceive access rights to public lands

From its economy to its geology, California has always been a place of dynamic upheaval, but as more affluent residents move into San Francisco’s impoverished Tenderloin neighborhood, tensions rise. One minister’s inclusive, politically charged church not only offers services to the area’s disenfranchised, it helps the Bay’s tech workers get to know their new neighbors and integrate themselves more constructively into the fabric of Tenderloin life.

Colin investigates an unlikely Japanese service: the booming rent-a-friend industry.

This is a Hollywood story, and it starts simply: A car drives through the streets of Los Angeles. It is March 2, 1994, and behind the wheel sits a man who has found a level of success that eludes the desperate majority here. Simon Lewis is a film producer and, at 35, an accomplished one. His is not a household name, but it is becoming an industry one. He makes light stuff mostly, and brings it in on time.