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Pan-Asian Metropolis — Q&A with filmmaker Elizabeth Ai about her latest...
If you’re American and you recognize names like “Bad Boys Blue,” “C.C. Catch,” “Sandra,” or “Modern Talking,” there’s a good chance that you, or someone close to you, is Vietnamese. For the uninitiated...
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𝕷𝖔𝖘 𝕬𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖑𝖊𝖘 𝕲𝖔𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖈, 𝖆 𝕳𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖔𝖜𝖊𝖊𝖓 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕯í𝖆 𝖉𝖊 𝖑𝖔𝖘 𝕸𝖚𝖊𝖗𝖙𝖔𝖘 𝕱𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖆𝖘𝖎𝖆
It’s almost Halloween. Surely one of the greatest holidays, Halloween is up there, in my estimation, with Burns Supper, Nowruz, Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving II. I keep reading and hearing, though,...
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Christmas Ghost Stories On Film
I’m not sure how widespread the practice of telling, reading, and watching ghost stories is on Christmas Eve, nor when it began. The custom appears to be almost unknown to most of my fellow Angelenos...
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Seasons in Los Angeles
In 2019, I decided to make a video essay documenting the changing seasons in Los Angeles. The film begins, as the year does, in winter. In this case, it’s winter in the San Gabriel Mountains that...
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Daphne Oram
Daphne Oram was a pioneering English composer of electronic music and musique concrète and inventor of early synthesizers. Oram was an eccentric, too, interested not just in experimental music but in...
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The Most Popular Spotify Playlists
Although I have my issues with Spotify — namely, it’s run by two billionaires who enrich themselves off both musician’s recordings and ads that feel like extortion — I use it a lot. It has to be said,...
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California Fool’s Gold — Exploring Santa Barbara
INTRODUCTION A year ago — over a year ago! — my partner and I visited the town of Santa Barbara. I meant to write about our visit for California Fool’s Gold sooner, but 2020 was the year everything...
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Nobody Drives in LA — Historic Los Angeles Transit Railways
I know that it’s not the case — but even the most recently transplanted Angeleno should know that Los Angeles was built around railroads. The first steam train appeared in Los Angeles in 1869,...
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No Enclave — Exploring Somali Los Angeles
SOMALI AMERICANS Although the first Somalis in the US arrived as sailors on British vessels in the 19th century, the vast majority of Somali Americans arrived as refugees from the Somali Civil War,...
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Pan-Asian Metropolis — Robert Kinoshita & his Remarkable Robots
I’ve been a fan of science-fiction ever since I was a toddler. Well, to be more precise, I was more of a fan of a certain sort of space opera than proper science-fiction. I wasn’t exactly reading...
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Los Angeles’s Neighborhood Councils
In 1999, the City of Los Angeles established DONE (which stands for the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment — municipal types love an acronym). DONE, in turn, established the neighborhood council...
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No Enclave — Exploring Belizean Los Angeles
INTRODUCTION Earlier this week, a reader suggested that I devote a No Enclave to Belizean Los Angeles. I had come across some Belizean businesses here and there when traversing the Westside of South...
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A Guide to African Cinema
INTRODUCTION One might think that defining African Cinema would be an easy enough task. Spend a little time in the attempt, however, and the difficulty in doing so definitively soon becomes evident. A...
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No Enclave — Irish Los Angeles
INTRODUCTION I have Ireland on the brain today. Oh right, it’s Saint Patrick’s Day. I wondered whether or not I, like so many observant Christians, should temporarily set aside my abstinence from...
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Eric Brightwell for Silver Lake Neighborhood Council Region 6 Representative
ABOUT ME My name is Eric Brightwell. I was born in Iowa City but mostly grew up in the country, outside of Columbia, Missouri. I first visited Los Angeles in 1998, during a road trip across Western...
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No Enclave — Arab Los Angeles
INTRODUCTION For years, there here have been efforts to designate April a month observing Arab American heritage although they have so far not born fruit. In 2017, Democratic congresswoman Debbie...
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Pan-Asian Metropolis — Vietnamese Cabarets of North Orange County
INTRODUCTION I’ve been aware of the Vietnamese American music scene based in North Orange County since at least the early 2000s. I had no idea just how big it was, though, until I stumbled across...
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Swinging Doors — Los Angeles Sake History & Culture
Los Angeles has a long and rich history of alcoholic beverage production and consumption. Wine was introduced by the Spanish as an integral aspect of their mission project. Los Angeles was, in fact,...
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Where Fools Fear to Tread — A Snapshot of Hawaiʻi (Oʻahu and Kauaʻi)
INTRODUCTION as spring turned into summer, Una and I visited Hawaiʻi. Una had never been there before. I, on the other hand, have always enjoyed telling people that I’d only ever been there in utero,...
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Nobody Drives In LA — Sunset4All
I think it was in 2019 that Terence Heuston (LA Bike Dad) approached me to discuss the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition‘s Sunset4All at one of that street’s many coffee shops. He described to me...
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