Los Angeles Times
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes

How the Hand Painted Rock ‘n’ Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip Came to Be

by juliawick

Collectors Weekly: Who started the music industry’s billboard trend?

Landau: As far as I can tell, it was the Doors in 1967 for their debut album. I talked with Jac Holzman—the head of Elektra Records who signed the Doors—while writing my book. In 1967, he had just come out here from the East Coast and opened an office on La Cienega Boulevard, not far from Sunset Boulevard, and it occurred to him that billboards were being used for everything except promoting records and music. A lot of radio stations where popular disc jockeys worked were farther east on Sunset, and he knew they drove on the Strip, and that the entertainment industry in general was based there.

Posted inNonfiction, Quotes

The Gentrification of San Francisco, Circa 1985

by juliawick

Stories about San Francisco’s latest wave of gentrification—perhaps exemplified by the tech bus battles—have been everywhere as of late. But this isn’t the first time critics have mourned the end of San Francisco-as-bohemian-enclave. From “Gentrification’s Price: Yuppies In, the Poor Out” which appeared in the Los Angeles Times on April 3, 1985: In short, San Francisco has become perhaps the most gentrified […]

Posted inUncategorized
by Longreads

A young man becomes paralyzed in a shooting near his church, and struggles with identifying the shooter, whom he recognizes as a former classmate (link includes parts one and two): Surgeons had labored for five hours to patch his left lung, remove his left kidney and his spleen. They could do nothing to repair his […]

Posted inUncategorized
by Longreads

American Airlines once sold a lifetime pass for unlimited first-class travel. They soon regretted it: In September 2007, a pricing analyst reviewing international routes focused the airline’s attention on how much the AAirpass program was costing, company emails show. ‘We pay the taxes,’ a revenue management executive wrote in a subsequent email. ‘We award AAdvantage […]

Posted inUncategorized
by Longreads

Pete O’Neal, 70, founded the Kansas City chapter of the Black Panther party and once threatened to “shoot my way into the House of Representatives.” He fled the country in 1970, eventually landing in Tanzania: Exile was supposed to be temporary. O’Neal corresponded with other Panthers and planned to return home to help lead the […]

Posted inUncategorized
by Longreads

A man, brought to the U.S. as a toddler, is suddenly deported to Mexico. He’s now trying to get back: The train had covered 10 miles through the high desert when it stopped at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint. An inspector and his canine walked by on the gravel path. Luna stifled his […]

Posted inUncategorized
by Longreads

Cain, writer of “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” “Double Indemnity” and “Mildred Pierce,” on the pros and cons of living in 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 […]

Gift this article