Letter From LA: Gods and Monsters
Swaying palm trees, cool evening breezes, night-blooming jasmine, ruby red and purple bougainvillea, golden sun at twilight: these are some of the cliches that describe Los Angeles — and they’re true. But here’s another version of LA’s reality, from the famous French sociologist, philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard: “There is nothing to match flying […]
Letter From LA – Summer 2022 – The Crime Issue
When I was growing up in Los Angeles, there were certain parts of the city you just didn’t go to — the bad sides of town: Watts, East LA, parts of Venice and Culver City, Pacoima, Gardena. The stigma never really bothered me: I hung out with bikers in Culver City, surf bums in Venice, […]
Letter From LA: Spring 2022
It’s been more than six months since my last Letter; this winter was a mind-numbing jumble of ill tidings that, to paraphrase Shakespeare, was a winter of (my) discontent, with little to celebrate, to write about. I can’t remember such despair on the U.S. stage since the dark days of the war in Vietnam: Book […]
Letter From LA: August-September
 Belated Happy New Year and Yom Kippur to my Jewish (and gentile) friends: Sounding the horn at the Jewish new year service. Engraving with etching by B. Picart, ca. 1733. It’s been a very mellow summer in Los Angeles. The weather these past few weeks has been delightful — no major heat waves, with temperatures […]
Letter From LA: May-June
Los Angeles (and, for that matter, all of California) opened wide June 15 and it was, in some quarters, as if COVID-19 never existed. Sporting events, concerts and raves are back on schedule; bars and restaurants were turning away customers — not because they were enforcing a “no-mask no entry” rule but because they were […]
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