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Los Angeles

Illustration by Kelsey Dake

The Curse of Cool

March 2, 2020

In the fall of 2005, at the shuttle terminal of New York’s LaGuardia airport, I entered the security line and noticed, in front of me, a slight and slightly stooped older woman. After a couple of blinks, I recognized Joan Didion.

Parasites


Para Mamita Juana, Papita Pablo, y Padrino Reden

Alma lost an eye when her house collapsed under ash. 
Milo severed his thumb por una bomba
Juana married John in Las Vegas.
Ernesto washed dishes in Hollywood until his skin cracked 
while impaled children lined El Mozote. 
I eat pan con café de palo for breakfast while David Bowie sings labyrinths 
to the tune of leather.

Photograph by David Ulin

Dancing Days

It’s Sunday morning in September and I’m walking Eighth Street when I see it: spray of words in green and pink, framed in the middle of the pavement as if an illustration of some kind. In the middle of the pavement?

Woe and Wonder

On a Saturday morning in early June, just before the heat spikes, I set out with my eight-year-old son from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. We start the way I drive to work—north on Spencer Street past rows of midcentury ranch houses; left around the playgrounds of William E. Orr Middle School; then right on East Katie where, just past Algonquin, I see two burned-out truck trailers at the edge of the Boulevard Mall parking lot. One has holes in its sides like white paper someone held a lighter to, blew out the flame, and burned again and again. Still, standing on its wheels and struts, it seems positively stalwart compared to its companion, collapsed on its belly—a gesture of abjection, it feels, but also prayerful? Inside the trailer shells I glimpse blankets and bottles and a plywood shed. I don’t dwell, though. I’m on my way to get waffles for my boy.

Photo by Ryan Bradley.

The Air Keeps It Interesting

1. In the darkness it was nothing but a thin low thrum, moving to a higher pitch as it neared. The Goodyear Blimp was somewhere out there. I stared into the sky off Venice Beach, California, trying to locate the thing. A woman in a polo shirt (Goo [...]

Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro

Mysterious American Cat

Due to their increasingly isolated habitats, the native mountain lion population of Los Angeles is under threat of extinction. Ryan Bradley discusses one solution under consideration, as well as the surprising relationship between big cats and one of the most populated cities in the country

Illustration by Gosia Herba

The Lineaments of Gratified Desire

When he thought about it, he could see that this thing with Alexa Jamison was a betrayal of the idea of what Sonya and he had been: the romance of that. Such a sweet beginning seems always to create a following inertia: the two families, everybody coming together as part of the story. 

Location of La Noria, the waterwheel Bon is constructing on the L.A. aqueduct. (Lauren Bon  and the Metabolic Studio, Bending the River  Back Into The City, 2014. Collage.)

Devices of Wonder

We lift our glasses to the river that has been for a very long time not a river, the river that is reenchanting Los Angeles, the river that will soon power an enormous waterwheel, which will turn right here where we are standing.

Illustration by Raquel Aparicio

My Life in the New Age

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked ••• angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connectionto the starry dynamo in the machinery of night . . .” —Allen Ginsberg, “Howl, [...]

Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro

Calling Art

He wanted to be on air. So between the church programs, the vitamin programs, the chunks of time bought up in fifteen-minute slots, Art came on to announce what was up next. The station signed off at midnight, but by eleven o’clock no one was buying any air time. That left a whole hour to fill with whatever he wanted.

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