Walking the length of Spring Street one morning, I counted 22 surface parking lots. I do this not out of a “Rain Man”-style numerical compulsion, but a no less distracting desire to feel out the progress of a city’s urbanism. The surface parking lot test gives you a sense of density, for one thing — […]
“When I came to, it was in a cloud of disbelief mixed with the stale taste of morning breath,” says Juniper Song, narrator and protagonist of “Follow Her Home”, Steph Cha’s 21st-century update on the Los Angeles noir novel. “I groaned and lay still with my eyes shut tight. As far as I could tell, […]
“Please stand clear. The doors are closing.” “That’s right! The doors are closing — closing on your chance for salvation! And if you refuse to accept your lord and savior, you’ll find yourself behind those closed doors! Behind them for alleternity!” The preacher went on, instinctively weaving each of the loudspeaker’s announcements into the morning’s forceful sermon. He wore a brown three-piece […]
Los Angeles once had a Seibu. Those who delve into the city’s history tend to obsess over some obscure happening from the past decade, the past century, the past two centuries. My own transfixing blip appeared just over half a century ago and disappeared soon after. “Even in Los Angeles — the city of gala […]
On the latest Los Angeles Review of Books podcast, I have a conversation with traveler and writer Anna Stothard, author of the new non-driving-Brit-in-Los-Angeles novel The Pink Hotel. You can listen to the conversation on the LARB’s site, or download it on iTunes.
Colin Marshall sits down in Los Feliz, Los Angeles with Joseph Mailander, who since 1981 has written fiction and poetry as well as political and cultural analysis in the city. His new collection is Days Change at Night: Notes from Los Angeles’ Decade of Decline, 2003-2013. They discuss his long relationship with Argonaut Street; the unique changelessness […]
To better understand the tragedy of man’s inhumanity toward man, first observe any motorist regarding any other motorist. Dramatic though that may sound, I do think about the finer points of mechanized depersonalization whenever I ride the Los Angeles freeways. Behind the wheel, the sweetest, most forgiving person you know appoints themselves humanity’s stern judge, […]
Colin Marshall sits down in Los Angeles’ Franklin Hills with Jeff Weiss, music writer for the LA Weekly and many other publications, editor of The Passion of the Weiss, co-host of the podcast Shots Fired, and co-author of the book 2pac vs. Biggie. They discuss the total time of his life spent waiting for rappers to show up […]
“I AM THE FEDER,” read the banner above. The feder? Oh no, I thought: another Jewish tradition of which I’ve gone through life ignorant. Maybe it has something to do with seder, which, as I understand it, involves a ceremonial meal. Or maybe it doesn’t; all I know about it I inferred from an advertisement […]
Little Tokyo sold me on Los Angeles. My northern Californian childhood introduced the delights of San Francisco’s Japantown, still one of my beloved areas, but every time I go there, it looks to have wearily endured yet another wave of exodus and surrendered to yet another degree of decrepitude. This, of course, makes for its […]