Colin Marshall sits down in Pasadena with journalist Patt Morrison, best known for her “Patt Morrison Asks” column in the Los Angeles Times, her years hosting Life and Times and Bookshow with Patt Morrison on public television as well as Patt Morrison on KPCC, and her book Rio L.A.: Tales from the Los Angeles River. […]
Thirty years ago, Missing Persons sang that nobody walks in Los Angeles, but experiencing La Brea Avenue suggests a new, more nuanced thesis: some walk in Los Angeles; they just don’t stop walking. If they sit down, they do so in a restaurant, bar, or coffee shop. La Brea offers a great many of those, […]
Colin Marshall sits down above Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles with Tyson Cornell, proprietor of Rare Bird Books and Rare Bird Lit, former longtime Director of Marketing & Publicity at Book Soup on the Sunset Strip, punk rocker, and co-editor of the forthcoming essay collection Yes Is the Answer: And Other Prog Rock Tales. They discuss […]
Los Angeles has a subway. This surprises almost as many visitors as it does natives. First moving here, I only considered apartments within walking distance of a station. Even then, I sensed this criterion, all-important elsewhere, has historically meant little to Los Angeles apartment-hunters. Despite taking four or five journeys underground every week, I understand, […]
West Hollywood came into official being on November 29, 1984, 25 days after I did. But which of us wears our years with greater dignity? I strain to look timeless, but timelessness, improperly cultivated, slides easily into blandness; West Hollywood can rest assured, at least, that it runs little risk of that. A mixture […]
“So they put chapulines in their kimchi?” a friend in Mexico City asked about my neighborhood. I do hold out hope that eateries in Koreatown, the district of Los Angeles it makes the most (and the least obvious) sense for me to live in, will one day offer its fermented cabbage topped by roasted […]
Each Tuesday, KCET Departures, a site about Los Angeles run by the city’s well-known public television station, will run essays adapted from my book-in-progress A Los Angeles Primer. The debut features Dennis Hopper, David Hemmings, and the reasons I got here in the first place: No two people have ever lived in exactly the same […]
Colin Marshall sits down in Silver Lake, Los Angeles with Vincent Brook, teacher at UCLA, USC, Cal State Los Angeles, and Pierce College, and author of books on Jewish émigré directors and the Jewish sitcom as well as the new Land of Smoke and Mirrors: A Cultural History of Los Angeles. They discuss the difference […]
Colin Marshall sits down in Santa Monica with Clive Piercy, founder and principal of design studio air-conditioned and author of the photo book Pretty Vacant, an appreciation of Los Angeles “dingbat” apartments. They discuss Reyner Banham’s enduring definition of the dingbat; his time growing up in England enamored with American culture, and his surprise to […]
“Los Angeles does not get the attention it deserves — it gets attention, but it’s the attention that Sodom and Gomorrah have received, primarily a reflection of other people’s bad consciences.” Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies “Prejudices are useless. Call Los Angeles any dirty name you like — Six Suburbs in […]