Search Results for: L.A.

On riots and race. What has changed, and what’s still bubbling under the surface, 20 years after the riots in South Central Los Angeles:

The L.A. Riots (or uprising, civil unrest, or rebellion, depending) are often considered the first ‘multiethnic’ riots. As a pivot point of race and urban relations, they constitute a resonant moment for immigrant America. Korean Americans living on the West Coast at the time remember the first day, 4-29, or sa-i-gu, with time-freezing clarity.

For many of us, the riots were a schooling in color and class. Our household, run by two working-class parents, was consumed by frantic arguments and phone calls about race, cities, and the distribution of wealth. There was talk of structural, large-scale discrimination, not merely individual prejudice or circumstance, which shaped the course of my life. Last summer, approaching the riots’ twentieth anniversary, I sought out the lessons of 1992. I was drawn in particular to the riots’ crucible in South Central, since refashioned as ‘South L.A.,’ though its infamy and boundaries–set by highways and thoroughfares–remain unchanged.

“South L.A., Twenty Years Later.” — E. Tammy Kim, Guernica Magazine

See more #longreads about L.A.

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 that I once read an interview with Nilsson where he claimed to have recorded ‘Without You’ after having taken what he described as ‘a little mescaline.’ The third thing is that ‘Without You’ is on an album called Nilsson Schmilsson, a title basically designed to make fun of Nilsson’s name, and that the cover of Nilsson Schmilsson is a picture of Harry Nilsson, unshaven, wearing a bathrobe.

“L.A. Weirdos.” — Mike Powell, Pitchfork

Previously: “Jack White Is the Coolest, Weirdest, Savviest Rock Star of Our Time.”

“The most powerful newspaper in Great Britain.” A history of the Daily Mail, founded in 1896 as reading material “by office-boys for office-boys,” as a former prime minister said dismissively. Its daily readership is now four and a half million, and its website recently surpassed the New York Times in traffic, with 52 million unique visitors per month: 

On January 25th, the model Kate Moss went to some parties in Paris. The next morning’s Mail read, ‘The Croydon beauty had very obvious crow’s feet and lines beneath her eyes as well as blemished skin from years of smoking and drinking.’ Another journalist, interviewing her that day, asked why she thought the Mail was so focussed on her aging.

‘I don’t know. ’Cause it’s the Daily Mail ?’ Moss replied. ‘They just get on everyone’s tits, don’t they?’

“Mail Supremacy.” — Lauren Collins, New Yorker

See also: “Zell to L.A. Times: Drop Dead.” — Laurie Winer, Los Angeles Review of Books, Nov. 9 2011

How the former baseball star went from unlikely business success to financial ruin—and now sentenced to three years in prison:

Even after his financial and legal troubles came to public light, Dykstra refused to give up the trappings of the gilded life. He continued to fly on private planes, and the charges that landed him in prison—many details of which have not been previously reported—stemmed from his apparently insatiable appetite for flashy cars, some of which he obtained using falsified financial documents. “He had to have all of these trappings to prove to himself he was as good as he thought he was,” L.A. County Deputy DA Alex Karkanen told SI after Monday’s sentencing.

In the unreleased documentary, filmed after his bankruptcy filing, the former Met and Phillie explains the importance of a private plane to his contentedness. “I said, O.K., I know I’ll be happy when I buy my own Gulfstream,” says Dykstra, reflecting on the plane he purchased in 2007. “But I got down to the end of the nose, I looked back and I said, O.K., happy, come on, come on. So it’s not about the Gulfstream. But it is about the Gulfstream. Meaning it just wasn’t as good a Gulfstream as I wanted.”

“How Lenny Dykstra Got Nailed.” — David Epstein, Sports Illustrated

See also: “Going…Going…Gone.” — Gabriel Sherman, GQ, April 1, 2009

Photo: Danny Moloshok, Reuters files

How Lenny Dykstra Got Nailed

Longreads Pick

How the former baseball star went from unlikely business success to financial ruin—and now sentenced to three years in prison:

“Even after his financial and legal troubles came to public light, Dykstra refused to give up the trappings of the gilded life. He continued to fly on private planes, and the charges that landed him in prison—many details of which have not been previously reported—stemmed from his apparently insatiable appetite for flashy cars, some of which he obtained using falsified financial documents. ‘He had to have all of these trappings to prove to himself he was as good as he thought he was,’ L.A. County Deputy DA Alex Karkanen told SI after Monday’s sentencing.

“In the unreleased documentary, filmed after his bankruptcy filing, the former Met and Phillie explains the importance of a private plane to his contentedness. ‘I said, O.K., I know I’ll be happy when I buy my own Gulfstream,’ says Dykstra, reflecting on the plane he purchased in 2007. ‘But I got down to the end of the nose, I looked back and I said, O.K., happy, come on, come on. So it’s not about the Gulfstream. But it is about the Gulfstream. Meaning it just wasn’t as good a Gulfstream as I wanted.'”

Published: Mar 7, 2012
Length: 14 minutes (3,534 words)

What it’s like to be a bisexual man in a world that wants you to choose between being either gay or straight:

Recently, on OKCupid, a woman messaged me: “Are you truly into ladies, and if so, what type? Finding a truly bi man is like finding a unicorn.”

If I’m a unicorn where I live now, in L.A., then I was a unicorn rocky mountain oyster when I moved to the old rustbelt city of Syracuse, New York to go to grad school and live for the first time as a fully out bi man. There was one other mythical bi man in the entire city, but try as I might, I never found him. At the gay bar, I sometimes got called a “half-breeder.” Straight people treated me just as shittily as they treat gay people. Three times, gay men hit me in the back of the head when they saw my head turn for a women. For the most part, straight women wouldn’t date me because, as one said, “You’re just gonna leave me to go suck a dick.” For the first time in my life, frat boys called me fag. My professor said, “The world just isn’t ready for gay marriage.” I emailed him “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Then I went out with friends and my gay friends didn’t know what to do because I got drunk and flirted with a lesbian. A friend said she thought bi people didn’t exist. I said, “I’m sitting right here,” because that was my answer, but I was starting to believe her. I stopped telling people what I was. I let people think what they wanted, which was usually that I was like them.

“Notes From a Unicorn.” — Seth Fischer, The Rumpus

See also: “Teaching Good Sex.” — Laurie Abraham, The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 16, 2011

Notes From a Unicorn

Longreads Pick

What it’s like to be a bisexual man in a world that wants you to choose between being either gay or straight:

“Recently, on OKCupid, a woman messaged me: ‘Are you truly into ladies, and if so, what type? Finding a truly bi man is like finding a unicorn.’

“If I’m a unicorn where I live now, in L.A., then I was a unicorn rocky mountain oyster when I moved to the old rustbelt city of Syracuse, New York to go to grad school and live for the first time as a fully out bi man. There was one other mythical bi man in the entire city, but try as I might, I never found him. At the gay bar, I sometimes got called a ‘half-breeder.’ Straight people treated me just as shittily as they treat gay people. Three times, gay men hit me in the back of the head when they saw my head turn for a women. For the most part, straight women wouldn’t date me because, as one said, ‘You’re just gonna leave me to go suck a dick.’ For the first time in my life, frat boys called me fag. My professor said, ‘The world just isn’t ready for gay marriage.’ I emailed him ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail.'”

Source: The Rumpus
Published: Feb 24, 2012
Length: 15 minutes (3,945 words)

The making of the album, on its 40th anniversary:

This is not a blues city. L.A. is about the concealment of appearance, but the blues is about its unraveling. The blues is the opposite of bullshit. And the psychic unrest of L.A. Woman is prominently placed on the album cover, which drops in April ‘71. Jim Morrison is shunted off to the side like a dwarf Russian woodcutter or an American werewolf about to ruin Paris. The border is blood red; the faces of the band, choleric yellow.

“Jim was seduced by the luxury and indulgences of fame,” Manzarek says now. Always bespoke and bespectacled, he has a voice as smooth as soy milk. In 1971, he splits time between a two-bedroom near the Whisky and a small penthouse on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “The more boorish the behavior, the more Morrison’s crew liked it. We confronted him, and he said he was trying to quit drinking. But he was a guy who would say, ‘I feel lousy. I need a drink.’ Conversely, ‘I feel great, I need a drink.’”

“L.A. Woman Was the Doors’ Bluesy Masterpiece, and Jim Morrison’s Kiss-Off to L.A.” — Jeff Weiss, LA Weekly

See also: “In Which There’s A Girl In New York City Who Calls Herself The Human Trampoline.” — Nell Boeschenstein, This Recording, April 8, 2011

Paradise (1933)

Longreads Pick

Cain, writer of “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” “Double Indemnity” and “Mildred Pierce,” on the pros and cons of living in L.A. and Southern California in the 1930s:

“There is no reward for aesthetic virtue here, no punishment for aesthetic crime; nothing but a vast cosmic indifference, and that is the one thing the human imagination cannot stand. It withers, or else, frantic to make itself felt, goes off into feverish and idiotic excursions that have neither reason, rhyme, nor point, and that even fail in their one, purpose, which is to attract notice.

“Now, in spite of the foregoing, when you come to consider the life that is encountered here, you have to admit that there is a great deal to be said for it.”

Published: Mar 1, 1933
Length: 38 minutes (9,665 words)

Brian Wolly: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Brian Wolly is an associate web editor at Smithsonian Magazine.

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1. Tom Bissell’s Breakdown of L.A. Noire on Grantland

When ESPN and Bill Simmons’ Grantland debuted in early June, the knives were out and its initial reaction was mixed at best. Like many, I approached the new project with simultaneous skepticism and optimism, but it wasn’t Simmons or Chuck Klosterman that sold me on the site’s potential. Bissell’s searingly accurate review and analysis of Rockstar’s supposedly groundbreaking video game L.A. Noire was the revelatory pice of writing that said, “Grantland will be around for a long time.” With his wit and contemplative style of placing L.A. Noire in the context of where the video game industry is headed, Bissell brought two much-vaunted products (Grantland and the game) down to Earth.

2. Sarah Stillman on the Invisible Army in Iraq

Perhaps no story from the New Yorker this year was more under-recognized than Stillman’s devastating expose on the third-country nationals working on U.S. military bases. The never-ending strata of deception piled upon political indifference was staggering. Her reportingwas a mash-up between the existential dread of The Wire with Eugene Jarecki’s Why We Fight and it deserves to be recognized for its brilliance.

3. The Film Nerd 2.0 Series on Star Wars: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6

The six posts that encompass Drew McWeeny’s adventure in introducing his two sons to the six Star Wars films are a joyous series that reawakened the film nerd in me as well. McWeeny does the impossible: he makes me appreciate the Phantom Menace. For any parent (or eventual parent) who dreams of showing their own kids the two trilogies, McWeeny offers an endearing road map for how to do so. For those who want to just show the original trilogy, he’ll show you why you’re wrong.

4. Jonathan Bernhardt on Peter Angelos and the Orioles

In 2005, with the introduction of the Washington Nationals, I had to choose between my hometown’s new team and the team I had grown up rooting for, the Baltimore Orioles. I picked the Nats and have never looked back. Here are Bernhardt’s catalogues of Angelos’ transition from working class hero to the most despised owner in professional baseball. Taken in aggregate, the list of misdeeds gets to the heart of loving a team that will always disappoint.

5. James Fallows on Hacked!

In his Atlantic cover story, Fallows relates what everyone’s biggest nightmare, losing control of their gmail, happened to his wife. I sent the piece around to friends and family, insisting that they implement the steps Fallows recommended. Service journalism at its best.

And quickly, 3 great longreads from Smithsonian.com:

1. A Mega Dam Dilemma in the Amazon

Clay Risen weighs the positives and negatives with the Inambari Dam in Peru — the astounding photos by Ivan Kashinsky are also worth a look.

2. The Beer Archaeologist

Staff writer Abigail Tucker takes on the toughest assignment ever: reporting on Dogfish Head Brewery’s attempts to recreate ancient beer recipes.

3. Minter’s Ring: The Story of One World War II POW

Our new history blog is a great source for so many #longreads, but Gilbert King’s retelling of Minter Dial’s lost ring is a stirring tribute to the “Greatest Generation.”

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